The Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia hosts the Leto and Costakis Severis Collection, a remarkable array of ancient Cypriot ceramics. This is in fact the paternal collection of Demosthenes and Nicos Severis, with whom the Museum has worked together towards housing the antiquities in a special gallery within the exhibition area of the Museum’s Constantine Leventis Wing.

The Museum’s collaboration with the Severis family and the acquisition of the Collection through a long-term loan were not random. The new wing where the Collection is on display had been the residence of the first mayor of Nicosia, Christodoulos Severis (1834-1900), father of the family’s first antiquities collector, Demosthenes Chr. Severis. His son, Costakis, and his wife, Leto (née Lympourides), a writer and avid expert on Cypriot history and archaeology, took on the Collection and expanded it. Owing to them, the Collection was methodically and passionately enriched with objects, mainly ceramics, spanning the period from the Chalcolithic Age to the Hellenistic years. The Collection focusses mainly on the history of Cypriot art, as well as on education.

On display in chronological order in the Leto and Costakis Severis Gallery is a large number of selected antiquities, representative of the Collection, accompanied by a wealth of educational materials intended mainly for children in a specially arranged area.