Chrysanthi Mavropoulou-Tsioumi began her career in the Archaeological Service in 1965, with a five-year break from 1969 to 1975, during which she was a research fellow at the Patriarchal Foundation of Patristic Studies and for two years studied in Germany as scholarship-holder of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 1975 she returned to the Archaeological Service and in 1981, when responsibility for restoring the monuments of Thessaloniki after the 1978 earthquakes passed exclusively to the Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities, she became director of the Ephorate and continued the restoration project. Her scholarly interests encompass almost all genres of Byzantine art, but particularly Byzantine painting. In 1986 she was elected Professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.