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The Acropolis Museum
Nov. 24th, 2021 12:07 amOne of the things that I most wanted to see on this trip was the new Acropolis museum in Athens. We saw it on Tuesday the 16th, and it was our very best day in Athens. In the early 1800s the British bought the crumbling pediments of the Parthenon from the Greek government (which at that time was the Ottoman Turks) and removed them to bring to England for display. About half of the marbles fell into the waters around the port at Piraeus while attempting to load them on ships. The others made it to London and have been on display at the British Museum ever since. The Greeks have wanted them back for nearly two centuries. "They are Greek marbles," they said, "and belong in Greece." Mostly the Brits said, "We bought them, they are ours." But at some point in the late 20th century a British diplomat expanded and said, "If we hadn't 'saved' them, they would have been destroyed by war and pollution. You don't have any place safe to keep them or display them. You should thank us for keeping them safe for the world." Well, that was a mistake.
The Greeks, their country proud but impoverished, built a new museum. It is huge, gorgeous, modern, climate-controlled, and was built with a whole glass-enclosed floor just to display the marbles from the Parthenon. Which are in the British Museum. I don't think they will ever be returned. But no one can say that Greece doesn't have a place for them.
We took a cab from the hotel to the museum. The building is an angled, geometric structure of glass, metal, and concrete starting at ground level below the acropolis and rising several stories so that the top level looks out almost level with ancient buildings on top. When I say glass and metal I mean everything. Including the floors. The ground floor is all see-through glass so that you can look directly into the on-going excavations below. It's more than a little disconcerting, and the only way I could manage it was to look ahead and not down.
The caryatids from the Erectheum are also on display in this museum. The ones actually on the acropolis now holding up the building are now replicas. One of the most interesting parts of this is that you can now see the backs of these female bearers of burdens, and the backs are in much better shape than the fronts since they spent a couple thousand years protected by the roof and not facing out into the elements. And of course you all know that all of this was originally painted in bright colors - no bland white marble for the early Greeks.
The top floor is, as I said, all glass-walled. With a wide bench around the whole thing. So one can sit and stare at the few existing bits of sculpture left, and at the pictures of the sculpture that is gone. It's like looking at the original pediments of the building almost at eye height. And through the windows you can see what is left of the Parthenon itself where Greeks are working a complex jigsaw puzzle to put as many original bits back where they belong and to replace missing stones and columns with replacement bits. You can also see the other hill of Athens, Lycabettus, rising above the city a bit farther away.
And my favorite part of the whole thing? Not only are there built in benches around the sides of the top floor, there are cube shaped benches throughout the building, and a theater with real chairs where they show a (quite political, but who can blame them?) film on the history of the Parthenon. That means that old, wimpy folks like me can enjoy several hours in the museum and see everything without giving in to exhaustion.
And speaking of politics, our day at the Acropolis Museum was the day that the city of Athens had a restaurant strike. All restaurants and tavernas and sidewalk food vendors in the city were closed. We had resigned ourselves to granola bars for dinner. But the café in the museum was open! The young woman who waited on us carefully explained that the wait staff belonged to the museum workers union, and when museums were closed for strikes, the waiters went on strike with them. But on that day we ended our expedition with a lovely hot meal of excellently prepared food, and I got a glass of Greek cider that was tart and tasty.
The Greeks, their country proud but impoverished, built a new museum. It is huge, gorgeous, modern, climate-controlled, and was built with a whole glass-enclosed floor just to display the marbles from the Parthenon. Which are in the British Museum. I don't think they will ever be returned. But no one can say that Greece doesn't have a place for them.
We took a cab from the hotel to the museum. The building is an angled, geometric structure of glass, metal, and concrete starting at ground level below the acropolis and rising several stories so that the top level looks out almost level with ancient buildings on top. When I say glass and metal I mean everything. Including the floors. The ground floor is all see-through glass so that you can look directly into the on-going excavations below. It's more than a little disconcerting, and the only way I could manage it was to look ahead and not down.
The caryatids from the Erectheum are also on display in this museum. The ones actually on the acropolis now holding up the building are now replicas. One of the most interesting parts of this is that you can now see the backs of these female bearers of burdens, and the backs are in much better shape than the fronts since they spent a couple thousand years protected by the roof and not facing out into the elements. And of course you all know that all of this was originally painted in bright colors - no bland white marble for the early Greeks.
The top floor is, as I said, all glass-walled. With a wide bench around the whole thing. So one can sit and stare at the few existing bits of sculpture left, and at the pictures of the sculpture that is gone. It's like looking at the original pediments of the building almost at eye height. And through the windows you can see what is left of the Parthenon itself where Greeks are working a complex jigsaw puzzle to put as many original bits back where they belong and to replace missing stones and columns with replacement bits. You can also see the other hill of Athens, Lycabettus, rising above the city a bit farther away.
And my favorite part of the whole thing? Not only are there built in benches around the sides of the top floor, there are cube shaped benches throughout the building, and a theater with real chairs where they show a (quite political, but who can blame them?) film on the history of the Parthenon. That means that old, wimpy folks like me can enjoy several hours in the museum and see everything without giving in to exhaustion.
And speaking of politics, our day at the Acropolis Museum was the day that the city of Athens had a restaurant strike. All restaurants and tavernas and sidewalk food vendors in the city were closed. We had resigned ourselves to granola bars for dinner. But the café in the museum was open! The young woman who waited on us carefully explained that the wait staff belonged to the museum workers union, and when museums were closed for strikes, the waiters went on strike with them. But on that day we ended our expedition with a lovely hot meal of excellently prepared food, and I got a glass of Greek cider that was tart and tasty.
