For years, Greek authorities have actually been suggesting for the long-term return of the supposed Parthenon Sculptures, additionally called the Elgin Marbles.
These consist of regarding fifty percent of the making it through pieces of a 160-meter-long (520-foot) frieze from the Parthenon Temple, which goes back around 2,500 years. They presently rest in the collection of the British Museum in London.
Athens desires them returned to Athens after they were drawn from the Acropolis around 200 years earlier. Former UK prime preachers Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak denied any kind of such relocation.
“The UK has cared for the Elgin marbles for generations,” Sunak stated in 2023. “Our galleries and museums are funded by taxpayers because they are a huge asset to this country.”
But in December 2024, UK head of state Keir Starmer held Greek head of state Kyriakos Mitsotakis in London equally as the British Museum revealed it had actually been holding “constructive” settlements with Athens over the return of marbles.
British Museum chairman George Osborne stated that “at some point, some of the sculptures” might be sent out to Greece in return for “treasures” from Athens.
As reported by AFP, Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni stated an offer still required “time and work” however included that both sides had “broken the ice.”
She additionally kept in mind that the UK Labour federal government chosen in 2024 did “not have the negativity of prior governments.”
The hope of a swap offer was more improved when Constantine Tassoulas, a leading advocate for the restitution of the Parthenon sculptures, came to be the Greek head of state in February.
As a society preacher a years earlier, Tassoulas assisted revitalize Greece’s project to redeem the Parthenon classical times. Amal Clooney, partner of star George Clooney, assisted to drive worldwide recognition regarding the restitution case.
Ongoing hesitation to return marbles
Presently, lawful obstacles make it hard for the marbles to be gone back toAthens The British Museum Act of 1963 avoids the British Museum from completely getting rid of items from its collections, with just a couple of exemptions.
Meanwhile, Tiffany Jenkins, the writer of “Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended up in Museums and Why They Should Keep Them’ (2016) ,” a publication that suggests the Parthenon Sculptures must stay in the UK, has lately been selected to the board of trustees of The British Museum
The British Museum has lengthy suggested that the marbles were obtained legitimately and must stay in the UK.
Claims to the Parthenon Sculptures started when they were drawn from Greece under order by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople — which regulated Athens up until 1832.
Elgin’s personnel started getting rid of the classical times from the Acropolis in 1801 and later on marketed them to the British federal government, in addition to thousands of various other antique products drawn from Athens.
Many various other marble sculpture pieces of the Parthenon frieze are presently in the Athens Acropolis Museum, which opened its doors in 2009.
Professor Nikolaos Stampolidis, director-general of the Acropolis Museum, talked at a meeting in Switzerland in March regarding the unifying power of restitution.
“Today, the democracies of the entire free world should support the return and reunification of the Parthenon sculptures to Athens, the mother of Western civilization, the cradle of all democracies, so that their significance may once again be celebrated, united,” he stated. “Greece is not asking this for itself alone. It is asking it for all of humanity, as an example of reunification.”
Vatican pieces go back to Greece
In 2023, the Vatican completed the procedure of returning numerous Parthenon marble pieces. The 3 items in the Vatican Museum’s collection have actually existed because the 19th century.
They ultimately went back to Athens on March 7, 2023, stated theVatican
One is a piece of the head of an equine that was drawing Athena’s chariot in the frieze. Another illustrates a young child’s head, thought to be joining a procession to honor the beginning ofAthens
In December 2022, Pope Francis provided to Ieronymos II, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, “as a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth,” according to the Vatican. Similarly, in January 2023, another fragment of the Parthenon sculptures depicting the foot of a goddess was returned to Athens by the Antonino Salinas Regional Archaeological Museum in Palermo, Sicily.
Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier and Louisa Schaefer
Editor’s Note: The initial variation of this short article from March 14, 2023, was upgraded on March 24, 2025, with information of revitalized settlements to return the Parthenon Sculptures to Greece.
