Housed on the ground floor of a building in
Serres town centre, its purpose is to give the local people and visitors to the town an opportunity to learn something about folk culture. The museum has six sections: musical instruments, jewellery, weapons and uniforms, sacred vessels, traditional dress, and reconstructions of folk life. The first section has a large number of old string, wind, and percussion instruments. The oldest, two
Thracian lyres, date to the seventeenth century. Other noteworthy exhibits are a bellows organ, bagpipes, old gramophones, and a reconstruction of an ancient lyre. The most notable feature of section two is the 200 buckles of all types – priests buckles large and small,
Sarakatsani buckles, Thracian buckles, and buckles from Orini. There are also collars, earrings, necklaces, watches, bracelets, crowns, and crosses, all dating to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The weapons in section three date from the late
Neolithic to the present day and include slingstones, stone
arrowheads, and metal arrowheads and spearheads. The more modern weapons include muzzle-loaded rifles,
flintlocks, nineteenth-century revolvers, sabres from
1821, powder magazines, and percussion caps. There are also military uniforms of various nations, caps, bayonets, medals, and cartridge belts. Of particular interest is a swordstick made by a craftsman from
Melnik. In the ecclesiastical section are suspended 120 handmade silver oil-lamps from churches in
Macedonia, numerous censers, a number of Gospels in Greek and in Russian dating to the seventeenth century, silver and gilt chalices, candlesticks, wood-carved and metal crosses, tabernacles, nuptial and baptismal crowns, gold-embroidered vestments (
stoles,
chasubles),
epitaphii. The most important of all the exhibits is a
chrismatory of St Demetrios, one of only four in the world. A little further on, recesses contain costumes and bedding used by the Sarakatsani, the Thracians, and the
refugees from Asia Minor. Lastly, visitors may admire the traditional women's costumes of
Florina, Orini in
Serres prefecture,
Arachova,
Metaxades in Thrace, the
Darnakochoria, and
Nea Zichni, and mens costumes from
Xiropotamos and Thrace. File:Macedonian_Museums-24-Laografiko_Xatziilia-119.jpg|Costumes and bedding File:Macedonian_Museums-24-Laografiko_Xatziilia-120.jpg|Ecclesiastical section File:Macedonian_Museums-24-Laografiko_Xatziilia-121.jpg|Traditional costumes File:Macedonian_Museums-24-Laografiko_Xatziilia-122.jpg|Traditional instruments File:Macedonian_Museums-24-Laografiko_Xatziilia-123.jpg|War section ==Sources==