A new museum has opened in Athens, with a special gallery in it for the Elgin Marbles.

The marbles are Greek sculptures that were part of the Parthenon, but have been held in London's British Museum for nearly 200 years.

Greece held a lavish opening ceremony, attended by foreign heads of state and government, hoping it would reinforce its claim for the return of almost half the stunning 160-metre frieze of a religious procession.

The 2,500-year-old sculptures were prised off the Acropolis walls in the early 1800s for Britain's diplomat Lord Elgin and he sold them to the British Museum where they remain.

Authorities in Greece are urging the museum in London to give them back what they say is rightfully theirs.

But despite the call, the British museum spokesman, Hannah Boulton, says the sculptures do not belong to Greece.

"They are now museum objects," she said.

"They are objects of world art and as such ... there is no problem with them being divided between two different museums and telling two different but complimentary stories."

Ancient gods and centaurs flickered to life, horses, owls and deer danced across the Athenian skyline, and statues of ancient girls blinked and tossed their hair as Greece opened its New Acropolis Museum, pressing its case that artworks from the 5th century B.C. Acropolis should all be housed together.

"If Pericles' Acropolis was a hymn to beauty, harmony and liberty, the Acropolis Museum today is the Ark which brings together all of the ideas that the Parthenon has stood for ever, since antiquity," Greece's Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis said in a speech. The museum can help bring "the reunification of the Parthenon marbles. Because the Parthenon marbles speak in their entirety. This is the way to show the integrity of everything they stand for."

Amid tight security and with a backdrop of animated scenes from the collection in the 130 million-euro ($181 million) museum, Greece is renewing its campaign to retrieve the Elgin Marbles, the sculptures taken from the Parthenon's frieze to Britain 207 hundred years ago and housed in the British Museum. The ceremony was broadcast live on Greek TV and online.

Completed three decades after the first call for a design, and after court cases and archaeological finds delayed construction, the museum is Greece's answer to the British Museum's argument that there's nowhere to house the Marbles.

Gods, Giants

The frieze depicts gods, giants, Greeks and centaurs in the annual Panathenaic procession. White plaster replicas of the stones in the British Museum sit next to the sand-colored stones left behind in Athens in the top glass gallery of the building designed by Bernard Tschumi. A terse "BM" is printed under the items still in London. Museums in Copenhagen and Paris are among others with sections of the stones.

Tschumi's concrete-and-glass structure, with the gallery swiveled to complement the angle of the Parthenon temple on the top of the hill 300 meters above it, houses thousands of works from the Acropolis, some never seen before.

The museum is designed to show the historical and social background of the 5th century B.C., something, Greece contends, lacking in the presentation of the Greek sculptures in the British Museum. The frieze in Athens with its missing pieces is "like looking at a family picture and seeing loved ones who are far away or lost to us," Culture Minister Antonis Samaras told reporters today.

Legal Owner

Successive U.K. governments have said the marbles won't be returned. British Museum director Neil MacGregor, in a 2007 interview, said objects could in theory be loaned for up to six months, though this would be impossible while the Greek government refused to acknowledge the Museum as the legal owner. Samaras said this month that would be unacceptable to any Greek government.

The collection includes artworks such as "the Calfbearer", the oldest statue on the Acropolis, dated to 570 B.C., and the "Cretan Boy", created after 480 B.C., in the Archaic Gallery, which allows visitors to walk around the artworks. The artworks are placed to demonstrate the passage of time and impact of social and political events and how artists started to move away from the stylized forms of the "korres" statues to a more natural appearance.

The Caryatids, the columns sculpted in the form of females, stand in their original formation with a space for a missing member, housed in London. Even during antiquity the details of the backs of the statues weren't visible, Alcestis Choremis, the retired director of Acropolis antiquities said.

The galleries of the new Acropolis Museum that houses invaluable finds dating from the 4th Millennium BC to the 5th century AD found on the Sacred Hill of the Acropolis were officially unveiled here on Saturday.

Dimitros Pantermalis, director of the new museum, told Xinhua that all of the Parthenon Temple sculptures owned by Greece will be displayed on the third floor of the new museum.

The third level of the 25,000 square meters museum, offering an unparalleled view of the Parthenon atop the Acropolis a couple of hundred yards away, has been reserved for when the Marbles -- as many Greeks devoutly hope -- return.

Replicas of the sculptures in the British Museum which were taken from Parthenon's frieze some 200 years ago are sitting next to those left in Greece. Visitors from across the world will admire the complete sculptures of the famous Parthenon Temple for the first time.

Greek President Karolos Papoulias, Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis as well as heads of states and governments, the President of EU Jose Manuel Barros and the Director-General of UNESCO Koichiro Matsuura attended the opening ceremony.

20 June 2009

It will be Greece's smartest party of the summer - a moonlit dinner for 300 international guests on the terrace of the new Acropolis museum.

The list for tonight's bash includes as many political and cultural luminaries as Antonis Samaras, the culture minister, could muster as Greece raises the stakes in its long-running campaign for the return of the Elgin marbles by the UK.

Among the heavy hitters will be Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, and José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, followed by a line-up of Unesco officials, international museum directors and A-list classical scholars.

But the British - custodians of half the 5th century BC frieze from the Parthenon temple, removed by the British diplomat and antiquarian Lord Elgin in the 19th century - will be conspicuous by their absence.

"We sent invitations to the Queen, the Prince of Wales and [prime minister] Gordon Brown and, naturally, the director of the British museum. None of them could make it," Mr Samaras said.

It was a UK scholar's remark 30 years ago, that if parliament ever voted to return the marbles Greece had nowhere suitable to display them, which triggered the museum project.

It has taken 30 years and eight Greek governments to bring the project to fruition.

The design - by Bernard Tschumi, a Swiss architect, and his Greek associate Michael Photiades - of glass and concrete boxes stacked on more than 100 anti-seismic columns is gradually winning over Athenians.

"It looked too big for the site at first but now I like its grandeur," said Stefanos, a student who rents an flat in Makriyianni, the middle-class neighbourhood behind the museum.

The display covers about 4,000 sculptures and smaller exhibits, including many that are on display for the first time after gathering dust for more than 100 years in warehouses around the Greek capital. The Parthenon gallery, a glass box with the precise dimensions and orientation of the ancient temple, glitters at the top of the building.

Inside, original panels of honey-coloured marble are interspersed with paler copies of the British Museum's half of the 160m frieze.

Greece's position is that the two halves should be reunited in the new museum at the earliest possible date, perhaps as a permanent loan.

To fill the empty space in the Duveen gallery in London, Greece would provide world-class sculptures from Greek museums, chosen by British Museum officials.

But the London curators are sticking to a longstanding argument: that the sculptures should stay where they are as part of "a unique overview of world cultures that the British museum exists to present".

Mr Samaras has warned his team to stay cool during this weekend's festivities and avoid contentious issues - such as whether Lord Elgin's "firman", a permit from the Ottoman Turkish rulers of Athens to collect antiquities from the Acropolis gave him the right to erect scaffolding on the Parthenon and cut down slabs of the frieze.

Worried that their guests tonight could grow bored of classical antiquity, museum officials have come up with a 30-minute video animation that brings the contents of the galleries to life.

Giant digital images of classical horsemen from the frieze, along with figures of statues and stylised birds and animals from ancient vases will flash across a backdrop of the Acropolis hill and buildings around the museum.

Is there is a difference between the ownership of culture and the ownership of particular artefacts? I have been mulling this over while thinking about the significance of the opening of the new Acropolis museum in Athens on Saturday.

The structure is Greece's answer to the British argument that there is nowhere in their country to house the Elgin marbles, the sculptures taken from the Parthenon's frieze and brought to the UK, two hundred years ago.

Architect Bernard Tschumi's glass and concrete building will house the stones Greece still has as its centrepiece, in a glass gallery which is angled to complement the angle of the Parthenon temple three hundred metres above it. And plaster replicas of the stones in the British museum will sit next to those Greece has in its possession.

The British Museum is willing to lend their bit of the Elgin marbles in theory, but the Greeks have to refused to acknowledge that the British museum is the legal owner of the artefacts. It is a controversy which matters because it forces us to debate the issue of culture and globalism - even though, in the case of the Elgin marbles, it sometimes feels as though it is more akin to a school playground spat.

Where do you stand on this issue? Should the Elgin marbles go back to Greece, or stay in the British Museum? Is that even the right question?

Shouldn't the question be how do we deal with culture in a globalised world; how do we deal with monuments that have global significance?

Designed by Bernard Tschumi and Mihalis Fotiades, the new Acropolis Museum has a total area of 25,000 square meters, with exhibition space of over 14,000 square meters. Made of stainless steel, glass, marble and concrete, materials typical of the Athenian environment, the new museum has a direct view of the Acropolis, while it keeps its "distances" from the block of flats and the rest buildings on Makrygiannis Street. It is ten times more than that of the old museum on the Hill of the Acropolis, where, where due to lack of space, "the exhibits were piled up or kept in storerooms," stressed Fotiades.

With bioclimatic planning, which gives ideal lighting and heating conditions, and designed to absorb noises and cemented enough to survive earthquakes measuring up to 10.0 on the Richter scale, the New Museum offers all the amenities expected in an international museum of the 21st century.

"Never did we try to give the building an ancient-Greek or neo-classical touch, because our goal was to keep it anonymous, as a shell embracing the universals features of our civilization," explained the leading architect.

Founded on the remains of ancient houses and workshops stretching on the south slopes of the Acropolis and were surfaced thanks to excavations, the new museum looks like hanging above an ancient Athenian quarter.

The Odyssey of the New Acropolis Museum

The creation of the New Acropolis Museum was the brainchild of late Konstantinos Karamanlis and Melina Merkouri, who was the first to suggest that the Elgin Marbles be renamed 'The Parthenon Marbles.'

It took three decades and countless adventures before authorities decide on the place to host it and bring it to life. Dozens of appeals were submitted to the State Council from the very first day the excavation started unearthing the area's treasures, and dozens of archaeologists and political engineers took legal actions. Furthermore, there were three tenders that yielded no results until 2000, when architects Bernard Tschumi and Mihalis Fotiades won the fourth one. 33 years of political disputes, fruitless tenders, bankruptcies of construction companies, lawsuits and appeals filed to the State Council preceded the founding of the new museum. In specifically, two tenders took place between 1976 and 1979, however, they fell flat. In 1989, then Culture Minister Melina Merkouri held a third tender, which was won by two Italian architects. However, Greek architects filed appeals and the tender was cancelled.

After Melina Merkouri's death in 1994, the Organization for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum was founded under the chairmanship of archaeologist Dimitrios Pantermalis. Three years later, excavation in the area chosen to host the new museum surfaced the remains of an ancient Athenian quarter.

Some years later, in 1999, the finds were viewed as listed, while the residents of the buildings that were going to be expropriated resorted to the State Council.

In 2000 a new tender takes place and the first prize is awarded to architects Bernard Tschumi and Mihalis Fotiades.

Three years later, however, the State Council ruled to have construction works frozen, following a new appeal.

During the 2004 Olympic Games, a lawsuit filed by Conservative deputy Petros Tatoulis, top-ranking members of the Archaeological Service, as well as leading Greek and foreign scientists were charged with breach of duty and destruction of antiquities.

However, in March 2004, when Tatoulis was appointed Culture Minister, the intentions of the Karamanlis administration were to speed up the construction works of the New Museum.

A Dream Comes True

Thus, 33 years after Konstantinos Karamanlis' inspirational decision on the construction of a new museum, and 27 years after Melina Merkouri's initiative a life-long dream is coming true.

Credit should also be given to archaeologist Dimitris Pantermalis, the person who turned the vision into reality, the impossible into the possible. But how did he make it? Professor Dimitris Pantermalis, despite the political, social, architectural and archaeological difficulties, never lost his courage and helped Melina's dream come into being. "The museum has been a major part of my life. I devoted the last phase of my career to it and this journey offered my unique experiences," said Pantermalis.

Dimitris Pantermalis took over the Organization for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum, which was founded after Melina's death in 1994. Professor of Archaeology at the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, he had been leading excavations in northern Greece since 1973.

The Exhibits and the Surprises of the Museum

The Parthenon sculptures and the copies of those located in the British Museum, the 130 metres of the frieze, the pediments, the antiquities of the Holly Rock of the Acropolis, the emblem of goddess Athena, Karyatides are what visitors will have the chance to enjoy during the opening ceremony of the museum.

The reasoning behind the exhibition, explained Mr Pantermalis, is to give the visitors the feeling they are walking through the place to realize the place where the excavations and the artifacts lie. "It takes three hours to get an overall view of the exhibition," added Pantermalis.

The exhibition is divided into five theme galleries, with one of them being the excavation itself that is expected to open to the public in a year's time. The about 4000 finds of the New Museum can be found at the gallery of The Acropolis Slopes, shortly before the main galleries, the gallery of the Acropolis during the Archaic Period (where life-size statues and horse riders are overwhelmed by the daytime light reflected on the details of the statues), and the gallery of the Parthenon, where the metopes, the frieze and the pediments of the ancient temple are presented before the visitors eye in full swing.

The biggest surprise, though, in store for the visitors, is a sawed stone, bearing witness to Elgin's stealing. Under the Parthenon frieze, half of its stones kept in the British Museum, there is a bare marble with no inscription on. It was sawed off in 1806 by Elgin and "we were left with the rest," noted Pantermalis. "We have several similar stone to remind us of the stealing."

Despite all these, the New Acropolis Museum is "the best possible environment to host the masterpieces of antiquity's most precious place," commented professor Dimitris Pantermalis. However, the vision of Konstantinos Karamanlis and Melina Merkouri for a "house" to host the united Parthenon Marbles remains a vision. The "house" was built and it is about to open its gates. The sculptures, however, remain in the British Museum. This is a bet that has not yet been won.

From 21 to 23 June, visitors can book tickets through the e-ticketing system. Touring will be taking place in three time zones, at 9am, 11am and 6pm, with 250 people being allowed to visit the museum's premises in each time zone.

Prices will stand at 1 euro throughout 2009, while they will not exceed 5 euros in 2010. For more information on the Museum, as well as the ticket service, visit the Museum's website: http://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/