THE golden age of ancient Athens came to life yesterday as Greece opened its new Acropolis Museum with a lavish party, bolstering its long campaign for the return of the Elgin Marbles.
Years of delays and often vociferous criticism about the museum's hulking design and location in the capital's old district come to an end with a ?3 million (£2.5m) opening ceremony attended by foreign heads of state and government – though conspi
cuously not from the United Kingdom. The 2,500-year-old sculptures stripped from the citadel more than two centuries ago have long resided here.
The reinforced concrete and glass structure sits near the foot of the ancient citadel like a skewed stack of glass boxes.
With UV coating on its walls of windows, air filters and climate control, the ?130 million (£110m) museum is Greece's answer to the argument that it had nowhere to safely house the frieze prised off the Parthenon in the 19th century by diplomat Lord Elgin and now displayed in the British Museum.
"This new state of the art Acropolis Museum now demolishes that excuse," said Culture Minister Antonis Samaras, who described the sculptures most Britons call the Elgin Marbles – Greece prefers Parthenon Marbles – as being in "enforced exile".
Greece sees the return of the sculptures – part of a stunning 160metre marble frieze that adorned the top of the ancient citadel's grandest structure, the Parthenon – as an issue of national pride.
The Parthenon was built at the height of Athens' glory between 447-432BC in honour of the city's patron goddess, Athena. Despite its conversion into a Christian church, and Ottoman occupation from the 15th century, it survived virtually intact until a Venetian cannon shot caused a massive explosion in 1687. Elgin removed about half the surviving sculptures in the early 1800s, when Greece was an unwilling part of the Ottoman Empire.
"On this momentous day, at this historic site, we appeal to everyone around the world who believes in the values and ideas that emerged on the slopes of the Acropolis, to join our quest to bring the missing Parthenon Marbles home," Samaras said.
The British Museum has repeatedly rejected calls for their return. It says it legally owns the collection it bought from Elgin, who sold it to stave off bankruptcy, and that it is displayed free of charge in an international cultural context.
"I think they belong to all of us," said British Museum spokeswoman Hannah Boulton. "We are all global citizens these days."
But on the top floor of the new Acropolis Museum, Greece's counterargument – that the sculptures were looted from a work of art so important that the surviving pieces should all be exhibited together – is displayed in stark relief.
The glass hall, with a 360-degree panoramic view onto central Athens and the Parthenon itself, displays the section of the frieze that Elgin left behind, joined to plastercasts of the works held in London.
The soft brownish patina of the original marble contrasts starkly with the bright white of the plaster casts sent by the British Museum in 1845: battle scenes are cut jaggedly in half, with the torso and heads of warriors and horses in London and the legs in Athens. The attempt to shock is deliberate.
"Until the missing marbles are back, all people, Greeks and non-Greeks alike, who visit this museum will feel great pride and great anguish when they walk up to the Parthenon Gallery and see the inspiring sculptures from the temple interspersed with the replicas of the pieces in the British Museum," Samaras said.
"It is like looking at a family picture and seeing images of loved ones far away or lost to us."
But the museum is not only about the missing marbles.
With about 14,000 square metres of exhibition space, it holds more than 4,000 ancient works, many of them never displayed before due to lack of space in the cramped old museum which sat atop the Acropolis hill.
Now visitors can walk among statues and friezes with surviving traces of paint; view fragments of sculptures and coins still bearing scorchmarks from the Persians' sacking of the city in 480BC and gaze through three stories of glass floors from the top of the museum straight into the foundations, where construction revealed an entire underlying neighbourhood of ancient and early Christian Athens.
The museum opens to the public today. Entry is at a nominal charge of ?1 (85p) until the end of the year, when it will increase to ?5 (£4).
The first four days are already completely sold out through internet sales.
