A different multi-sensory tour

The museological approach of the exhibition of the museum of the holy monastery of Skiadi, entitled "The natural world in the worship of the church", utilizes three powerful elements: the monastery relics and artefacts, the natural world, and the worship life of the Orthodox church.

The tour is experiential through a series of multi-sensory displays and discovery drawers distributed throughout the route of the exhibition. Visitors do not only use their sight, the sense that usually dominates during a visit to a museum, but are also invited to utilize their senses of hearing, touch and smell to understand the themes addressed by the subsections of the exhibition. They are challenged to observe the objects outside the enclosure of the displays, through an experiential process of "discovering" their properties, uses and symbolisms.

Visitors are invited to touch some of the exhibits, an action usually forbidden in museum exhibitions, and by touch, to discover materials used to make artefacts or other objects employed in divine worship, samples of natural materials, such as wax, wheat and flax, or to explore the texture of objects of the exhibition such as fabrics, a prosphoron seal, a consecration cross, tamata (promised offerings), etc. Also, to smell materials such as beeswax, incense and essential oils used in the making of the Holy Myrrh. Through tablets equipped with headphones, visitors can listen to testimonies of residents of Rhodes and watch videos on the topics addressed by the exhibition.

A digital guide for smartphones and tablets, combined with labels with QR codes on the displays, both provide additional information about the objects in the exhibition At the same time, they provide more information to visitors who may have a special interest in one of the objects or topics discussed in the exhibition.