On May 1, 1909, Yannis Ritsos was born in Monemvasia. The month of May was to mark his career as a poet.   

It was 29 April 1936, when the tobacco workers of Thessaloniki went on a long strike, with the main demand being an increase in the daily wage from 75 to 135 drachmas. On the morning of 8 May, the Thessaloniki Gendarmerie used excessive force to prevent the thousands of demonstrators from heading towards the Administrative Centre, where the General Administration of Northern Greece was based.

The following day the strike front was widened with the participation of artisans, industrial workers and other branches of workers, while shopkeepers kept their shops closed in support of the strike. The demonstrators again attempted to head towards the Administration Building, with the Gendarmerie being unable to prevent them this time and eventually opening fire on them. As a result, 12 strikers were killed and hundreds injured.

On 10 May, 27-year-old Yannis Ritsos saw a picture of a mother mourning over the dead body of her demonstrator son on the front page of the Rizospastis newspaper. Shocked by the sight, the poet isolated himself in his small room in Exarchia and began writing Epitaph. Two days later, three of the twenty chants of the poem entitled “Odeal” were published in Rizospastis.

In 1958 Mikis Theodorakis set eight of the chants of the Epitaph to music, achieving great commercial success. The timelessness of the album is also revealed by the popularity of the first verse of the sixth chant «Μέρα Μαγιού μου μίσεψες, μέρα Μαγιού σε χάνω», which continues to come to the lips of many with the coming of May.

The Museum has in its photographic collection photographs of the great poet. In the one pictured, by Nikos Floros' royalty, Ritsos is seen during his conferral of an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Athens in 1987.