New Acropolis opens to the world

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By Wang Linyan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-06-22 10:47

Athens: The new Acropolis Museum officially opened to visitors on June 20 in Athens, Greece.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Greece's President Karolos Papoulias revealed how this important project was an effort to capture the awe and emotion that everyone feels when looking at the Parthenon.

"The messages and the symbolism of the sacred rock of the Acropolis belong to the world. They carry the essence of the ancient Greek civilization: democracy, knowledge, austerity and aesthetics, to every corner of the earth. To us Greeks, they mean something beyond that: They are our identity and our pride," the president said.

Covering a total area of 25,000 square meters, the museum has an exhibition space of over 14,000 square meters, ten times more than that of the old museum on the Hill of the Acropolis.

To protect the relics from pollution, most of the marble sculptures will be moved indoors, which the old museum built 200 years ago could not achieve. This is an important purpose of the new museum, said Christos Failadis, the Press and Communication Counselor for the embassy of Greece in China.

The spacious exhibition rooms will also allow the sculptures to be displayed more appropriately, Failadis added.

At present the museum consists of three levels.

The base of the museum "hovers" over the existing archaeological excavation.

The middle is a large, trapezoidal hall that accommodates galleries from the archaic to the Roman period.

The top features the rectangular Parthenon Gallery arranged around an indoor court.

Attracting considerable praise and attention is the unique 160-meter-long frieze wrapped around the central core of the gallery. On the frieze, Greek originals stand alongside white-plaster copies of the Parthenon sculpture sections that were removed in 1806 by Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which at that time ruled over Greece.

Sadly, till the present British Museum officials have rebuffed repeated Greek requests for the return of the 2,500-year-old marbles, referred to as the "Elgin Marbles".

Commenting on this, President Papoulias mentioned that although most important sculptures of the Parthenon can be viewed together, "Some are missing." Continuing he added that, "It's time to heal the wounds of the monument with the return of the marbles where they belong.

Capturing the proud but tragic sentiment that concerns stolen lost relics, Greece's Minister of Culture, Antonis Samaras noted, "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. It is like looking at a family picture and seeing images of loved ones far away or lost to us."