In 1991 the Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia was awarded the European Museum of the Year Award. The prize is awarded every year by a special committee that operates under the auspices of the Council of Europe. It was a distinction that deservedly helped to place the Leventis Museum on the map of the most notable and important museums in Europe. In its unanimous decision the panel of judges said that, for the first time, Cyprus had acquired a modern museum, which records the history of a town in an objective and balanced way.

‘We came to the conclusion that the museum which scored more highly than others was the Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia, whose quietly brilliant and astonishingly determined and well-informed and politically sensitive curator has given Cyprus its modern museum and provided it with a real opportunity to break out of the straitjacket of archaeology which has held back museological progress for far too long. It is a museum with style, with wit, with cultural balance and, above all, with a keen sense of the needs and tastes of today’s public.’

Kenneth Hudson

Extract from the magazine of the Committee of the European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA), Spring 1992