The collection contains ca 250 copies of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine wall-paintings, wall and pavement mosaics, icons and textiles.  The size, the medium and the copying techniques vary, as do the reasons for producing these works.  They are reproduced on canvas, paper or more rarely plaster or plywood; in oils, tempera, or watercolour, sometimes even in mosaic and occasionally in charcoal or pencil.  They date from the last decades of the nineteenth century up to the 1960s and were made either to preserve historical treasures - while at the same time making them into accessible objects of study - or as a way of practising the painting methods of Byzantium.
   
The copies do not always accurately reproduce their models.  Some are truly faithful copies (e.g. the works of Nikolaos Ferekeidis), while others represent a 'reading' of the Byzantine or Post-Byzantine model in a new style (e.g. the works of Agenor Asteriadis).  Many of the works in the collection were created by well-known artists and icon painters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as Photis Kontoglou, Agenor Asteriades, Polykleitos Rengos and Demetrios Pelekasis; or by pioneering conservators of Byzantine art, such as Photis Zachariou  and Yiannis Kolephas.
   
The Museum's collection of copies was assembled under the aegis of the directors Adamantios Adamantiou (1914-1923) and George Sotiriou (1923-1960).  The earliest items in the collection date to 1880 and are copies of wall-paintings by Manuel Panselinos in the Protaton on Mount Athos.  They were made by the Swiss Émile Gilliéron, who was commissioned by the Byzantinist Spyridon Lambros. There are also some extremely fine copies of the mosaics and wall-paintings from St Demetrios in Thessaloniki.  Made by Émile Gilliéron Jr and Nikolaos Ferekeidis, these copies were commissioned by Sotiriou, who oversaw the restoration of the church.
   
The Copies Collection, which makes lost Byzantine works accessible at the same time as reflecting the artistic production of a whole period, is one of the least well known in the BCM.  It ceased to be displayed in 1964, and it is only in recent years that its artistic and historical importance has been recognized.