The New Acropolis Museum was officially inaugurated on Saturday evening during a nationally televised and web-broadcast ceremony that brought together Greece's political leadership and scores of international dignitaries, boosting hopes that the purpose-built museum's opening will mark the "reverse countdown" for the long-sought return of the Parthenon Marbles.

In one of the most poignant moments of the evening, Prof. Dimitris Pantermalis, the director of the new state-of-the-art facility, pointed to numerous mutilated sculptures on display in the third-storey Parthenon Gallery, sculptures whose other half is found at the British Museum in London. Instead, white-coloured plaster replicas depict the missing friezes in the New Acropolis Museum most celebrated gallery.

Pantermalis personally gave a guided tour of the 25,000-square-metre museum to international dignitaries, including EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura, who addressed the ceremony, as well as to Greece's leadership.

"Today, the whole world can see, all together, the most significant sculptures of the Parthenon. Some are missing. Now is the time to heal the monument's wounds with the return of the marbles to where they belong ... their natural setting," Greek President Karolos Papoulias said in addressing the international audience and television viewers across the country.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis emphasised that the new 130-million-euro museum belongs to all of humanity and forms part of the world's cultural heritage.

"In the sacred hill of the Acropolis the world views the forms that ecumenical and eternal ideals take. In the New Acropolis Museum the world can now ascertain these forms, these ideals, reuniting them and allowing them to regain their radiance ... Welcome to a Greece of civilisation and history; together we are inaugurating a museum for the supreme monument of the Classical civilisation: the Acropolis Museum," Karamanlis said, while again referring to his namesake and uncle, Greek statesman Constantine Karamanlis, along with iconic Greek actress and culture minister Melina Mercouri, as protagonists in the decades-long campaign to build the new museum.

"The Acropolis Museum is a reality for all Greeks; for all the people of the world. It is a modern monument, open, luminous and is harmoniously intertwined with Parthenon itself. It permits the Attica sun to shed its light on the ancient works of culture and allows the visitor to enjoy and appreciate the details of the exhibits. This modern monument narrates the history of democracy, art, rituals and everyday life. It succeeds in harmonically linking antiquity with the modern world of the technology and imagery. That's why pioneering," Karamanlis told the audience of dignitaries, which included lead architects Bernard Tschumi and Michael Photiadis.

On his part, Greek Culture Minister Antonis Samaras opened his address by expressing optimism that "the (pieces) that are not here today, those that were separated and carted off 207 years ago will return. They will certainly return; the Parthenon and its sculptures were the victims of plunder. This crime can, today, can be corrected. The museum serves as the moral force to invite them back; to reunite them," he stressed.

In attendance were all of the country's past presidents, along with leaders from Cyprus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Slovakia, Finland, Montenegro, Vietnam and China, together with 21 foreign ministers from all over the world.

The tour of the Museum, with includes more than 4,000 exhibits spread over 14,000 square metres of exhibition space, began at 8:30 p.m. (local time) from the ground floor level and the first hall, which hosts exhibits (parts of pottery mostly) of a Neolithic settlement once located on the Acropolis' slopes.

Fragments of pottery dating to the 3rd century BC and believed to be from a foundation-laying ceremony of Classical antiquity were on display in a glass-covered crypt in the main concourse, with PM Karamanlis handing an intact pottery vessel to a museum official who placed it inside the crypt before it was encased with the glass cover.

Prof. Pantermalis then officially inaugurated the museum with a phrase in ancient Greek, "the Athenian goddess resides here. No evil may enter".

Greece has opened its highly anticipated new Acropolis museum. At the opening ceremony, the ancient country had a single message: bring back the marbles from Britain.

Columns, sculptures, and marbles are all characteristics of the Acropolis.

They attract thousands of visitors everyday, though some of them are missing.

Now, Greece is trying hard to have its message heard: the Parthenon Marbles must return to Greece.

Antonis Samaras, Greek Culture Minister, said, "The Parthenon and its marbles were victims of looting. This crime can be corrected today. The museum is the ethical power that calls them back, so they can be re-united. The marbles here are calling for the marbles in London."

In a symbolic move, Samaras placed an original fragment of a marble artifact next to the remaining plaster copy of the same piece. The original artifact is currently in the British Museum.

The Parthenon Marbles, also known as the Elgin Marbles, were removed from the Acropolis 200 years ago by British forces. They were later purchased by the British government and given to the British Museum.

Greece has been asking Britain to bring them back since the 1980s. But the British Museum has refused to return the pieces, saying Greece did not have a proper place to store the marbles.

Greece now claims this new museum diminishes the argument.

The new Acropolis Museum is a modern building of 25-hundred square meters with glass walls and floors.

It was built at a cost of 170 million US dollars. Visitors can enjoy the ancient masterpieces while looking at the actual Acropolis through the museum's glass walls.

Visitors from a number of other countries as well as Greeks went to see the displays at the New Acropolis Museum yesterday, its first day open to the public. The museum will be open every day except Mondays and public holidays. Tickets will be priced at 1 euro until the end of this year, after which they are due to rise to 5 euros.

Thousands of people visited the New Acropolis Museum yesterday, the first day that it was open to the public after Greece had used the opening ceremony on Saturday as an opportunity to state its case for the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum.

Up to 10,000 people who had booked their 1-euro tickets online were expected to walk through the doors of the museum between 8 a.m and 8 p.m. Until tomorrow, only visitors who have booked their tickets via the www.theacropolismuseum.gr website will be able to view the 4,000 exhibits on display. The first week is sold out.

According to The Associated Press, Chryssa Salamanou from Athens was the first through the doors with her husband and child. "We felt that today, with our child, we had to be the first ones to admire the masterpieces which finally found such a worthy, such an important home," she said.

For many visitors, the main attraction was the museum's top floor, where sections of the Parthenon frieze left in Athens have been joined with plaster casts of the works that Lord Elgin removed more than 200 years ago and took to London.

Greece's desire for their return was at the heart of much of what was said and done during Saturday's ceremony, when some 400 dignitaries were guided through the museum, as the pressure on Britain to return the sculptures was ratcheted up.

"It is time to heal the wounds of the monument with the return of the Marbles that belong to it," said President Karolos Papoulias. "They are our pride and our identity."

Culture Minister Antonis Samaras said the Marbles were in "enforced exile," which is "not just an injustice to us Greeks but to everyone in the world, the English included, because they were made to be seen in sequence and in their entirety."

The president of Greece, Karolos Papoulias, threw some muscle into his country's tug of war with Britain over the Elgin Marbles, decorative sections of the Parthenon that were removed in the early 19th century and now reside in the British Museum. Speaking on Saturday at the lavish opening of the New Acropolis Museum, a $200 million center built in part to prove to the world that Greece has the capability to care for its antiquities, Mr. Papoulias (above at the opening) said, "It's time to heal the wounds of the monument with the return of the marbles which belong to it."

Chaps, it looks as if we're running out of arguments. In the long-running dispute over who should have the Elgin Marbles — the exquisite frieze sawn off the Parthenon between 1801 and 1805, and currently housed in the British Museum — the Greeks may have just played the winning card.

Yesterday, Athens saw the official opening of the state-of-the-art Acropolis Museum, almost within touching distance of the monument itself.

And the top floor, which is specifically designed to house the controversial sculptures, is the finest display case you're ever likely to see.

Walled on all four sides by glass, the floor reconstructs both the frieze and the 92 metope sculptures set within it in something like their entirety.

Plaster casts take the place of the sections that are missing — and for a British visitor, they make for extremely uncomfortable viewing. We're not the only nation that has taken bits of the building.

The Louvre has some of it, and there are fragments in Würzburg and Copenhagen, but it's clear from the endlessly repeated initials "BM" (British Museum) on the information plaques that we've got all the best bits.

We can argue all we like about how we saved the sculpture from years of turmoil in Greece, but with this room finally completed, it's obvious where they now belong.

You can imagine the fanfare that has accompanied the opening. I was at the preview for the Greek press on Wednesday, and even that was blessed by a bishop and attended by the kind of paparazzi scrum you'd expect for Britney.

And if it makes you wonder whether it might be time to stretch the resources and plan a visit to see what all the fuss is about, then you'd be right.

Just don't go for the museum alone. The irony inherent in the project is that, with most of its star attraction missing, the collection feels half-baked. It does have its moments.

The caryatids are here — the graceful women/pillars that used to support the southern porch of the Erechtheion (and yes, the British Museum has one of these too).

There's also a particularly fine explanation of classical Athenian weddings, using fragments of vases. For the moment, though, this is more a political statement than a world-class collection. If you're after dazzling artefacts and original sculpture, you need to go to the National Archaeological Museum, just a couple of stops north on the Athens Metro.

Instead, consider the new museum as the final touch in the rehabilitation of the whole Acropolis site and you won't be disappointed. The really important step was made before the 2004 Olympics, when the roads around it were pedestrianised.

Now, instead of the roar of traffic, you get cafe conversation and birdsong.

The intellectual and emotional buzz that comes from visiting such a dramatic and significant monument is accompanied by sensual summer pleasure, too.

Athens may be one of the most congested cities in Europe, but you won't feel it here, staring up at the Parthenon's columns as they turn to gold in the evening sunlight. Suddenly, your high-speed city break will feel like a proper holiday.

Beat that, Bloomsbury.

Travel brief

Visiting the museum: tickets for timed entry to the Acropolis Museum (theacropolismuseum.gr) can be booked online, and cost only €1 (85p) until December 31. For more infor¬mation, visit breathtakingathens.com

Greek President Karolos Papoulias has renewed his country's call for Britain to return sculptures removed from the Parthenon in Athens 200 years ago.

At the opening of the Acropolis Museum, Mr Papoulias said it was "time to heal the wounds" of the ancient temple.

The new museum, opened five years behind schedule, houses sculptures from the golden age of Athens.

The British Museum houses many of the surviving scultpures from the temple, and has refused to return them.

"Today the whole world can see the most important sculptures of the Parthenon assembled, but some are missing," said Mr Papoulias.

"It's time to heal the wounds of the monument with the return of the marbles which belong to it."

The British Museum sculptures, also known as the Elgin Marbles, originally decorated the Parthenon temple and have been in London since they were sold to the museum in 1817 by Lord Elgin.

He had them removed from the Acropolis when he was visiting Greece, then under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

The British Museum long argued that Greece had no proper place to put them - an argument the Greek government hopes the Acropolis Museum addresses.

The opening ceremony was attended by heads of state and government and cultural envoys from about 30 countries, the UN and the EU.

There were no government officials from Britain, but the most senior British guest, Bonnie Greer, the deputy head of the board of trustees of the British Museum, said she believed more strongly than ever that the marbles should remain in London.

She argued that in London they are displayed in an international cultural context.

She said a loan was possible, but that would require Greece to acknowledge British ownership, something Greece refuses.

The British Museum holds 75m of the original 160m of the frieze that ran round the inner core of the building.

'Act of barbarism'

Their reconstruction in the Acropolis Museum is based on several elements that remain in Athens, as well as copies of the marbles in London.

The modern glass and concrete building, at the foot of the Acropolis, holds about 350 artefacts and sculptures from the golden age of Athens that were previously held in a small museum on top of the Acropolis.

The £110m ($182m; 130m euros) structure, set out over three levels, also offers panoramic views of the stone citadel where they came from.

The third floor features the reconstruction of the Parthenon Marbles.

The copies are differentiated by their white colour - because they are plaster casts, contrasting with the weathered marble of the originals.

Museum director Prof Dimitris Pandermalis said the opening of the museum provides an opportunity to correct "an act of barbarism" in the sculptures' removal.

"Tragic fate has forced them apart but their creators meant them to be together," he said.

Bernard Tschumi, the building's US-based architect, said: "It is a beautiful space that shows the frieze itself as a narrative - even with the plaster copies of what is in the British Museum - in the context of the Parthenon itself."