A little way beyond the Folk Art Museum spread the Municipal Gardens (daily 8.30am-8pm/7pm), a couple of acres of well-tended greenery frionting the sea, with an expensive restaurant within. The gardens are the venue for the September Wine Festival (10 days during the first half of the month); there's also a mini-zoo (daily: summer 9am-noon& 3-7pm; spring/autumn 9am-6.30pm; C£0.50), mostly comprising an aviary, though it has a zebra and a few cheetahs.
The district Archeological Museum (Mon-Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 1 Oam-l pm; C£l),just north of the gardens, is strongest on Archaic, Geometric and Bronze Age artefacts. The left-hand gallery is ninety percent pottery, best of which are the Geometric-era dishes -an obvious inspiration for the modern tsesti or woven circular wall-hangings you see everywhere in tavernas.Archaic terracotta figurines also abound, with what are thought to be toys scattered amongst the animal-drawn chariots and other votive offerings. Highlights include a rhyton in the form of a bull, and a headless torso with unusually detailed hands holding a bird to its chest. Female figures, possibly offerings for fertility, clasp their breasts or a mirror (a symbol of Aphrodite/Astarte), and one plays a frame-drum. A column capital in the guise of Hat4or demonstrates the introduction of Egyp- tian gods to the island. Bird-necked zoomorphic Bronze Age pots with vestigial noses and ears round off the hall's exhibits.
The smaller, central Classical room is sparsely stocked except for some gold and precious-stone jewellery; there's also a curious anthropomorphic lampstand, with ears for an oil wick and the head hollowed to accommodate a candle or incense. The Roman section on the right contains the usual painted and multi- coloured glass; the rainbow/oil-slick effect is the result of sodium and potas- sium ions leaching into the alkaline soils in which the objects were embedded before discovery.
