Museum of Nautical and Cultural Tradition of Skiathos

The Museum of Nautical and Cultural Tradition of Skiathos was founded in 2015 and is housed in the Bourtzi Cultural Center of the Municipality of Skiathos.

Soul and creator of the Museum, o Giannis Parisis, Captain E.N. and president of the Museum of Maritime and Cultural Tradition of Skiathos, who gave us a tour of the sites and described to us the thousand waves that passed his original idea to become a reality and to tell the public the maritime history of the island.

The Museum through its collections narrates and travels to us two centuries of Shipbuilding and Naval History of Skiathos.

The exhibits narrate the long shipbuilding tradition of the Skiathos shipyards that helped the development of the Skiathos sailing ship until the 19th century, as well as its evolution into modern shipping.

According to Giannis Parisis, after the Russo-Turkish wars, the Skiathos acquired the right to build small boats on their island. Later the masters were given the opportunity to grow their boats, but also to expand their activity both in the Mediterranean and in the Black Sea.

The transfer of the city from the isolated Castle to its current location, the safe port, gave a huge impetus to the development of both shipbuilding and seamanship. The initiatives of the Skiathos to give to the crews share on profits (such as the example of pre-revolutionary Hydra) as well as the diligence They were the main pillars on which the Skiathos shipping developed. When deforestation was allowed in 1833, an intensive construction of sailing ships began.

The master craftsmen were mostly illiterate and to get their signature they hired someone who knew how to write. These illiterate shipbuilders therefore did not face any problem in building boats which, both for their size and for their excellent shipbuilding line, attracted the attention and interest of shipbuilding scientists, inside and outside Greece.

The captain of the English Navy James Kennedy, in his report to the English Admiralty, makes an honorable mention of these illiterate shipbuilders, and in his official publications the Admiralty, refers to shipbuilding art of Skiathos. His exhibits narrate the long shipbuilding tradition of the Skiathos shipyards that helped the development of the Skiathos sailing ship until the 19th century.

One of the paintings and photographs of the museum depicts 2 boats built on the shipyard of Kostas G. Mytilineos, a 1200 ton louver named "Vasiliki" of the ship owner Stergios Ragias, and the boat "Skiathos" owned by the Raptakis brothers the most beautiful sailing ship of Levante.

The permanent collection consists of more than six hundred exhibits, among them, shipbuilding tools, drawings and shops for the construction of sailboats in the Skiathos shipyards, a representation of traditional shipbuilding, a rare collection of small shipbuilding and paintings (late 19th century).

In the section of the exhibition that presents the seafaring, there are nautical charts, navigation instruments and calendars (bridge, engine and radio), diplomas of officers and junior crew, a complete representation of a Liberty ship deck, models of a Greek ship and a small ship tribute to the Submarine "Katsonis", which sank off Skiathos in 1943.