Acropolis Museum, Now Open

Greece celebrated the opening of a new museum at the Acropolis in Athens, Greece on June 20, 2009. Work had begun before the 2004 Olympics, but bureaucracy and the discovery of archaeological finds at the building site delayed the opening until now. The modern museum is climate-controlled and is a suitable place to keep marble sculptures which would otherwise be damaged by the climate in Athens. The first story of the building has over 350 pieces of art, including stone and clay sculptures, pottery and other objects beautifully displayed.

One entire room shows the placement of the Parthenon friezes as they would have appeared around the upper part of the walls of the Parthenon. Many of the original pieces are now in the British Museum; these have been represented with plaster casts. The Parthenon frieze shows the procession of all Athenian citizens to the Temple of Athena to worship the Goddess, as well as images of the Greek gods and goddesses who watch the proceedings. The Parthenon friezes are among the most beautiful and treasured productions of human artistic ability.

Part of the impetus for building this museum was to convince the British government to return the sections of the friezes which are in the British Museum (usually known as the Elgin marbles, since they were donated by Lord Elgin). He received permission from the Turkish government to remove the pieces from Athens at a time when Greece had been conquered by Turkey. That may have been good enough or at least legal for Lord Elgin at the time, but Greece is a free country again now, and the Greeks would like their cultural heritage back. Greece has been asking for the return of the sculptures for a long time but the pieces remain in the British Museum in London.

The government of Greece hopes that the presentation of the Parthenon friezes, including the plaster copies in the new museum, will show how they fit together, and will clearly demonstrate the importance of having all of the pieces together in one place. This excellent museum has been built to keep the marbles safe.

The museum has many other beautiful objects besides the Parthenon friezes. A great deal of archaic material has been found from the dig site, for example the Museum website shows beautiful bronze sculptures of a lion, a bull, a dog and a bird from the archaic period and gives this explanation:

"From the time of Peisistratos onwards, the site of the Acropolis began to fill with votive offerings, offered to the Goddess, both as tokens of respect and as marks of financial and artistic development. These important offerings were mostly statues meant to please the Goddess."

This description of the votive offerings gives more clear insight in how the site was used for specifically religious purposes by the ancient Greek people and is typical of more modern standards of curating museums which provide the cultural context for the objects on display rather than merely piling them up in a room of "pretty" things.

Admission will be 1 euro until the end of the year and then it will go up.

This information is from an interview with Christopher Hitchens on NPR (National Public Radio) and from the website of the Museum.