Cranes began hauling over 4,000 pieces of sculpture from the small exhibition hall atop Athens’ Acropolis to the new museum 400 meters away at the base of the ancient citadel. Crowds of bystanders watched the first of the monuments gingerly lifted by cranes at the 2,500-year-old Parthenon. Yesterday’s meticulously choreographed operation will be repeated 153 times during the next three months as an estimated 4,500 antiquities are moved from the Acropolis to the new museum.
(photo: DPA)

Yesterday ancient sculptures began making their way down from Athens‘ Acropolis to a new museum built specifically to hold them and the so-called Elgin Marbles, which are currently housed in the British Museum. The British Museum has consistently refused requests by Greece to repatriate the Parthenon sculptures (Elgin Marbles), arguing that it lacked a suitable venue in which to display them together.

However, it is the building’s emphasis on loss - the absence of the 88 sculptures exhibited in London - that gives it a poignancy few other museums have. But the new museum by the Swiss-American architect Bernard Tschumi, it is hoped, will eventualy do away with the argument that modern Greece is incapable of properly housing the treasures of its golden age.

Read what the major European newspaper have to say about this historical event:
The Guardian / BBC / The Independent / Der Spiegel
And watch the photo galleries of Der Spiegel and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung

On the website of Arcspace you can read more about the New Acropolis Museum