ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Engineers moved an ancient Caryatid statue from the old Acropolis museum on Saturday and transported it to a new museum at the foot of the hill.
The three-hour operation, using three cranes, was the most sensitive transfer so far in a massive move of Acropolis antiquities to the new museum due to open to the public next year.
«The work is going well and is on time,» Culture Minister Michalis Liapis said. «The transfer of the other Caryatid statues will take place over the new few days.
Six Caryatids _ stone columns sculpted in the shape of women _ supported the Erechtheion Temple on the Acropolis and five of them were replaced in 1979 with replica casts to prevent further erosion from atmospheric pollution. The sixth is in the British Museum in London and is part of the Elgin Marbles collection, which Greece has long demanded.
Four of the five originals that remain in Greece were moved in 1979 into the old Acropolis museum, which is closed to the public, and the fifth is being restored.
Greece hopes the new Acropolis Museum will boost its campaign for the return of the Elgin Marbles collection, removed some 200 years ago by British diplomat Lord Elgin when the country was still part of the Ottoman Empire.
«All the statues we move are fragile and require the utmost attention,» supervising engineer Costas Zambas said. «The Caryatids had the additional strain of being exposed to the atmosphere for so many years and were not buried in the ground. So you could say they received some additional care.
Zambas said the Caryatid undergoing restoration remains «in pieces.» It will also eventually be transferred to the new museum.
Before Saturday's move, the air content in the sealed display holding the Caryatids had been altered for the statues to adapt to the conditions at the new museum.
A total of 4,500 antiquities, mostly marble sculptures dating to the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., will be shifted into the new Acropolis Museum 400 meters (yards) away. The most valued artifacts were transferred from a tiny museum on the Acropolis, which was closed in June.
The antiquities are insured for ¤400 million (US$586 million) and have been wrapped in padded harnesses and packed into styrofoam-filled boxes made of plywood and metal.
On Saturday, technicians took about an hour to unpack a metal contained used to carry the Caryatid, removing bolts and pulling out styrofoam-and-plywood packing before the statue finally emerged.

Monday December 3, 2007
The Guardian

It was a day unlike any other. Bernard Tschumi arrived at his office in New York's Chelsea Village to receive a phone call. This was the big one. The Swiss-American architect had won the greatest prize in architecture: the international competition to design the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. This was a job, surely, coveted by every A-list architect in the world.

No sooner had Tschumi put down the phone than he was told that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Centre. "We all watched from our roof as the second aircraft smashed into the other tower," he says. "No one felt like celebrating after that. It wasn't a particularly good start."

Tschumi's new museum - a geometrical marvel dedicated to the celebration of antiquity - was funded by Greece's ministry of culture and the EU. The building is complete, though its display of magnificent Athenian art, some 4,000 ancient artefacts in all, won't be finalised until next summer. But this is not just a splendid gallery. From the very beginning, the new building had to engage in an architectural dialogue with the nearby Parthenon, the 5th-century BC temple dedicated to the wise if warlike goddess Athena, the virgin (or "parthenos").

The Parthenon - centrepiece of the Acropolis, the "sacred rock" at the heart of Athens - was commissioned by Pericles, at the height of Greek power, from the architects Ictinus and Callicrates and the sculptor Phidias. The result was a meticulously self-contained and perfectly proportioned marble temple enclosed by 46 fluted Doric columns; it has no wings, no projections, nothing to take away from its perfect form. This creation has long been judged the single most important building in the canon of western civilisation, partly because of the classical values it so perfectly embodies, and partly because its beauty really is hard to match. Classicists have bowed before it, but so did Le Corbusier, the most iconoclastic of modern architects. How can any architect ever match its rhythm and harmony?

Oddly, the building had been all but abandoned when the seventh Earl of Elgin came here to ship many of its famous sculptures to London in 1801, triggering a controversy that has rumbled on for two centuries. It has been a church, a mosque and even a gunpowder store, depending on who held Athens at the time. Partly destroyed by a Venetian mortar in 1687, the Parthenon only really began to matter again politically after the Greeks won their war of independence from Turkey in 1821. Ever since, the Parthenon has been a sacred symbol to Greece.

Naturally, Tschumi wanted to do his best in the shadow of this architectural colossus. Creating something to complement the aesthetic heights of the Acropolis was not, however, his only challenge; the Greek government needed a building grand enough to finally persuade the British government to return the Elgin Marbles from their current home in the British Museum, to a gallery in the new museum.

Things started badly. "There were those who said the building should be in a traditional classical style," says Tschumi. "Then the government changed, and everyone thought the project would be cancelled. Some said the job shouldn't have gone to a foreigner. During construction, there were 104 court cases against the scheme."

No wonder it wasn't ready for the 2004 Athens Olympics. As for the site, it was problematic, too. Not only was it just 300 yards from the hallowed Acropolis, it was also riddled with the archaeological remains of an antique Athenian suburb in mid-excavation. Plus an underground train line ran nearby, threatening noise and vibration. Then there was the 19th-century neo-Greek police academy that occupied a big chunk of the site; a protected building, it had to stay. To create enough room for the new museum, some apartment buildings had to go - by order. Finally, on top of all this, there was the threat of earthquakes.

Something of a poisoned chalice? "No," smiles Tschumi. "I think architects are often at their best when faced with restraints." The biggest restraint was that, given the strictures of the site, it was going to be very hard to design a building that would be both big enough for its purpose and offer great views of the Acropolis. Given the dazzling sun that blasts Athens for much of the year, the ideal view would face north, to avoid glare. Yet the building had to lie east-west.

The solution? Going with the east-west flow for the main part of the building, Tschumi then twisted the rooftop gallery - which is intended for the Elgin Marbles - north. This glorious touch creates a purposefully, rather than gratuitously, dynamic building. It also offers a tremendous view of the entire Acropolis.

This twist aside, the museum's design is calm, even strait-laced. Entirely free of decoration ("The ancient sculpture on display inside will be enough," says Tschumi), the concrete, glass and marble building nevertheless plays a number of clever structural games. The glass-floored entrance lobby, for example, straddles the excavation site so that, as you amble into the museum, you see below you the outlines of shops, alleys, houses, baths and workshops dating back to 600AD. It is like a stroll into antiquity: beneath your feet is street life; high up above is the civic glory of the Acropolis.

From this vantage point, you can also make out the irregular forest of concrete columns the new museum stands on, the antithesis of the beautifully rhythmic spacing of the Parthenon's columns. Each is placed to avoid touching the fabric of the ancient city below. Some are close together, others far apart, and all appear to perform an unlikely engineering waltz. In fact, these columns are doubly clever. They have joints, like giant knees. In times of tremor, the columns will dip and sway - enough, hopefully, to save the building from collapse. "The Greek authorities kept saying our columns didn't comply with local building codes," says Tschumi. "We said, 'But this is what the world's best structural engineers, Arup, recommend.' We studied the building codes. They had last been revised in 1916."

Once over the excavated ancient streets, you reach a generous hall, aglow with slanting sunbeams. The feeling of having arrived somewhere special is inescapable. In front of you, a great ramp slants up to the main galleries, the entrance of which is crowned with the marble pediment of an ancient temple.

There is no sign here of a museum shop, nor the smell of cappuccinos. There is no clutter and few signs, just generous, beautifully lit architectural space, clad in cool marble. Despite so much marble, there is surprisingly little clomp and clatter from visitors' shoes: all the many, mathematically spaced circular holes you see in the walls are there to absorb sound. An entrance lobby designed for at least 3 million visitors a year is never going to be as quiet as a temple, but this is a remarkably calming space.

The first floor holds more surprises. A vast, sunlit and many-columned chamber, it is a pleasure to walk through in its own right; but by next summer, it will be adorned with Greek and Roman-era Athenian sculpture. "I hope the main galleries will be as uninterrupted as possible," says Tschumi. "No ropes to keep visitors away from the sculptures. Minimal captions. No architectural distraction." Eventually, there will be a cafe on the rooftop terrace complete with sunshade, offering splendid views over the rooftops.

Crowning the museum is that skewed top floor, a great glazed box facing north to the Acropolis. The views are picture-perfect, except for those missing marbles, of course. Some of those superb sculptures - of steeds and soldiers, gods and giants - will soon inhabit this gallery, though the majority will remain, as yet, in the British Museum. Intriguingly, this gallery is the same size as the core of the Parthenon, so visitors will get a sense of the scale of the sculptures in relation to the mother temple. In a brazen move, copies of the missing sculptures will be installed, fronted with gauze masks so they look like the ghosts of the plundered objects. As Tschumi says, "A visit to the top floor will be a journey into the world of cultural politics and propaganda, as well as great art."

And a journey into impressive design, too. A glass gallery in the scorching Athenian sun? It sounds like madness. Yet it should all work, coolly and calmly - not just because that north view is glare-free, but also because a double-glazing system channels cool air between the glass panes.

Whether the marbles will ever all return to Athens is a question for curators and politicians. The New Acropolis Museum is certainly ready to receive them. "Orchestrated simplicity" is how Tschumi described his goal. Unpretentious, well-built and wearing its ingenuity lightly, his building is a relaxed walk through layers of ancient Greek art, architecture and city-making. It makes the Parthenon even more important than it has been over the past two centuries, even if some of its marbles, the very reason for the museum's construction, are still missing. But how much does it matter? The Parthenon is 2,500 years old. Perhaps there's no great hurry to put the final touches to Tschumi's handsome building.

KATHIMERINI English Edition 11-3-2007

Decades of diplomacy fell on deaf ears. The return in 2004 of the Olympic Games to their ancient birthplace was not a compelling enough argument. Now Greek authorities hope that an empty glass chamber opposite the Parthenon will shame British officials into returning the collection of sculptures cut from Athens's most revered monument two centuries ago.

This could be the trump card in Greece's tireless campaign to recoup the world's most contested works of art: the Parthenon Marbles to those who seek their return, the Elgin Marbles to those who say they belong in the British Museum, where Lord Elgin sold them in 1816.

As Athens' New Acropolis Museum nears completion, and the painstaking process of transferring priceless artefacts from the old museum on the Parthenon to the spacious new building gets into full swing, attention is again focused on what is missing from Greece's rich ancient legacy.

The new museum – a light-suffused modern structure crowned by an empty glass gallery aligned with the Parthenon – articulates silently what legions of diplomats have been unable to convey: that the Marbles are not where they should be.

Due to open late next year, the work of Swiss-born architect Bernard Tschumi has impressed foreign art critics, some of whom had backed the British argument for keeping the sculptures in London's landmark museum.

Following a recent visit, The New York Times architecture critic, Nicolai Ouroussoff, enthused: "It's impossible to stand in the top-floor galleries, in full view of the Parthenon's ravaged, sun-bleached frame, without craving the marbles' return." On a subsequent visit to London, Ouroussoff observed, the displaced sculptures "looked homesick."

The Guardian's Stephen Moss makes a similar point: "(Lord) Byron was right, and it's time to fill the gaps the Greeks are so tellingly leaving in their new museum."

It is this absence – highlighted so poignantly by the new museum's design – that Greece hopes will make its case. "We want visitors to wonder where the sculptures are," says Greece's culture minister, Michalis Liapis.

The new wave of optimism has given fresh impetus to lobbyists. "The completion of the New Acropolis Museum is the best and final argument for where the sculptures belong," says Eleni Cubitt, of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, one of several pressure groups around the globe. Cubitt is seeking to recruit young British architects as "the most persuasive promoters for the reunification of the Marbles in such a unique building."

One institution remains unmoved by this new wave of optimism. Although it has quietly dropped its original argument – that Athens lacked an appropriate venue to display the Marbles – the British Museum is unflinching in its conviction regarding "the trustees' legal ownership" of the sculptures and the important role they play in its collection. "The Museum exists to present a unique overview of world cultures and the sculptures are a vital part of that overview," say spokesperson Hannah Boulton, adding that the Marbles explain "Greece's cultural links with other great civilizations of the ancient world." With 5 million visitors a year and no entrance fee, it makes Phidias' sublime works accessible to all, she says.

But the current "zeitgeist" seems to favour campaigners' arguments. This year has seen renewed debate about art restitution with major museums under increasing pressure to return artefacts to their countries of origin. Both Greece and Italy have received antiquities from the Los Angeles J. Paul Getty Museum and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art after the pieces were shown to have been "improperly acquired."

But these artefacts had been relatively recent acquisitions. Proving the ownership of antiquities spirited away from their original locations centuries ago is another matter, experts say. There is no legal framework to support restitution claims in such cases.

UNESCO – the United Nations' agency promoting the arts whose presidency Greece assumed last month – has a certain prestige but cannot oblige governments to return plundered antiquities. So it comes down to the good faith of these countries.

Leading British archaeologist Lord Colin Renfrew calls for an "international consensus on which antiquities 'belong' in their place of origin." Such a pact "would be a strong argument for the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Athens," he says. But artefacts should be repatriated selectively, he notes, as "there must be a role for international museums."

Many argue that returning the Marbles would trigger a flurry of dubious claims by governments against museums.

The British Museum insists that masterpieces like the Marbles, which form an integral part of established exhibitions, should be non-negotiable. "There is a clear distinction between the current illicit trade in antiquities and the existence of historic museum collections on which so much of the world's knowledge about its past is based," says Boulton.

The museum is equally intractable in the case of another of its crowd-pullers: the Rosetta Stone, a carved granite slab that was the first key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics. But Egypt has boosted efforts to recoup the piece as plans to build a 380-million-euro museum near the pyramids in Cairo get under way. Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, has appealed to Britain to return "the icon of our Egyptian identity."

His words bring to mind an appeal for the Marbles made at Oxford University in 1986 by Greece's late culture minister Melina Mercouri: "They are our pride. They are our sacrifices...They are the essence of Greekness."

KATHIMERINI, 20/10/07

The Acropolis is "missing the Marbles," was the headline of a story in the Christian Science Monitor by Nicole Itano, in a report on the beginning of a large-scale operation last week to move tons of antiquities from the Acropolis to the new museum at its foot. At 9 a.m. sharp last Sunday, a 2.3-ton marble sculpture was the first of 4,500 works of art that will be moved over the next three months. The new museum, however, will be better known for what is missing from it rather than for what it contains. For when it opens to the public next year, the celebrated Parthenon Marbles, also known as the "Elgin Marbles" after the British member of the nobility who made off with them in the 19th century, will still be missing. Nearly 200 years later, the British Museum still has about half of the extant Parthenon sculptures. Greece hopes that the new museum will put more pressure on London to return them. The latest battle to have the marbles returned dates back to 1982, when the then culture minister, actress Melina Mercouri, speaking at a UN conference, called for their return. The Christian Science Monitor quoted Anthony Snodgrass, a retired professor of classical archaeology at Cambridge University and chairman of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles. "One of the arguments in the past that was always used was, if only Athens had a proper exhibition space for the marbles and if only the Greeks showed themselves able to look after and exhibit the marbles satisfactorily, it would be a different matter,"... "Now everybody will be able to see for themselves what is being perpetuated by keeping the two halves of the marbles apart. And this will be graphically displayed in the new museum." The US-based Swiss architect who designed the museum, Bernard Tschumi, said the missing marbles were "central to his design." As for the British Museum, its spokesperson Hannah Boulton, told the newspaper that "the very purpose of the British Museum is to present a unique overview of world civilization, and the Parthenon Marbles are an integral part of that." Germany's Deutsche Welle press review, and Austria's daily Die Presse both carried extensive reports on the importance of the new museum. It is clear that Greece is not alone in seeking the return of its cultural treasures. Meanwhile, Jules Dassin, the president and soul of the Melina Mercouri Foundation, which was instrumental in realizing the new museum, said nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.

Architectural treasure was broken apart 200 years ago.

On Sunday, Oct. 14, three huge cranes began to move crates containing priceless sculptures from the 600-feet high Acropolis of Athens to a new museum on the plain below. The state-of-the-art museum, built in direct view of the Parthenon, will be home to the temple's artistic treasures.

Dubbed "the move of the century," it has reopened — perhaps more vehemently than ever — the issue of the reunification of the Parthenon marbles, previously called the Elgin marbles, with the country, culture and structure from which they were separated more than 200 years ago.

The temple of the goddess Athena, commonly known as the Parthenon, was built between 447 and 432 B.C., at the highpoint of the Greek Golden Age. Designed by two brilliant architects, Ictinus and Kallikrates, the building was conceived and constructed not only as the perfect architectural form but also as a universal symbol of humanity. Over the course of more than 2,500 years, it has exercised a tremendous influence on western architecture and remains one of the highest expressions of the human spirit.

It is from this unique building that, in 1801, Lord Elgin removed a large number of architectural and structural pieces, taking advantage of his position as British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which occupied Greece at the time. No fewer than 56 panels from the frieze, 15 metopes, and 19 pedimental sculptures — along with a number of architectural members, including parts of columns supporting the entablature — were taken by Elgin's agents and eventually deposited in the British Museum.

Greece eventually escaped Ottoman rule, but demands for repatriation of its antiquities — many of which, after centuries of plunder, had ended up in European museums — generally fell on deaf ears.

Britain toyed with the idea of returning the Parthenon marbles several times in the last two centuries. She came very close to doing so after World War II as a gesture of gratitude to the Greek people for their heroic fight against the Nazis. But it never happened.

In 1981, Greece officially petitioned the British government for the return of the marbles, arguing that they are not just any pieces of sculptures, but integral parts of a unique monument. Since then, international support for this request has been growing steadily.

UNESCO and the European Parliament have passed resolutions asking Britain to return the marbles, and numerous committees have been formed in countries around the world, including the United States, in support of the cause.

Why should Americans care? Our society prides itself on morality and justice, and our nation has a long and outstanding tradition of defending those principles. There is no justification for us to avoid the issue of a unique part of world cultural heritage remaining fragmented.

The importance of the Parthenon as a universal symbol of humanity can be fully assessed only when the integrity of the building is restored. The pieces removed by Elgin are not free-standing works of art meant for exhibition in a museum 1,500 miles from their original setting. To the contrary, they are architectural sculptures, and several of them serve a functional use in the building. Removing them from the monument stripped them of their meaning, importance and essence. If we are to conserve and preserve this unique building for future generations, we must ensure that the original concept of the creators of the Parthenon is restored.

Times have changed. The 19th century imperialistic mentality that brought the marbles to London is a thing of the past, replaced by an ideal that prizes international cooperation and good will. Several public opinion polls taken in the last 10 years in England have indicated that a large part of the British public and the majority of British members of parliament would like to see the marbles returned to Greece.

Under the auspices of UNESCO, the Parthenon now is undergoing extensive restoration using the best materials and latest techniques known to science; the museum where the sculptures can be exhibited properly is ready for them.

The British Museum now has the opportunity to align itself with the best principles of our time. A gesture of good will towards the international community will reunite the Parthenon with its exiled sculptures.

Understand: What is at stake here is not the fate of a few pieces of sculpture, things remote from us in time and space. The issue is our collective human conscience, our attitude towards the preservation of a unique monument and the cultural heritage of the world: our heritage.

Michael B. Cosmopoulos, a professor of archaeology, holds the Hellenic Government-Karakas Foundation endowed chair of Greek studies at the University of Missouri at St. Louis.

For the first time in 2,500 years the ancient sculptures from the Acropolis in Athens have begun moving to a new home, the new Acropolis Museum at the foot of the hilltop citadel. The first piece that made the meticulously choreographed journey was a 2.3-ton marble block from the Parthenon frieze, a sculpted strip depicting a religious procession that runs around the ancient temple just below roof level.

Using three cranes up tp 170 feet high, a team of 35 workers relay the priceless 6th and 5th centuries B.C. artefacts off the Acropolis hill into the purpose-built new museum, which is set to open its gates to visitors next year. The cranes are expected to ferry the antiquities down the fabled hill within three months. Wearing padded harnesses, the sculptures are hoisted into Styro-foam-filled boxes made of plywood and metal. Each crate will take up to 2 1/2 hours to reach the new museum, travelling just a few yards above ground level.

In total, 154 sculptures weighting 113 tons and thousands more antiquities from the 130-year-old first Acropolis museum, weighting another184 tons, will be placed in the new ultra modern building designed by Bernard Tschumi. The initial "transfer of the century" as the Greek Culture Minsiter Michalis Liapis has described it, was watched by crowds of bystanders as well as officials, notably Mr Liapis and the ambassadors of the EU member countries in Greece.

Mr. Liapis said that it was a "historic event of a global significance". Greek officials hope the new site will boost the country's long campaign for the re-unification of the Parthenon sculptures, known in the UK as the Elgin Marbles. The Parthenon Marbles are a collection of sculptures that were removed from the Parthenon 200 years ago by Lord Elgin and are now part of a collection at the British Museum in London.The British Museum argues that by being exhibited in London, the sculptures are seen in a broader historical context.