It was chiefly during the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth that this collection was put together with objects for the large part drawn from private collections.

It is exhibited in a gallery next to the ‘Apamea’ room and is set out chronologically; a constant is the collection of Greek vases that take the visitor from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period. There is a rich, regional variation, because the various centres of the ancient Greek world never came to form an homogenous culture.

Selected decorative objects, articles of use and tableware are displayed together to complete the picture of a civilisation within a specific period and in a specific region. Statues (generally Roman copies or imitations of Greek originals) and tomb reliefs are grouped in front of the entrance to the Greek gallery and to the rear of it.