Lord Elgin was a dick. That’s the British guy that showed up at the Acropolis in the late 1800’s with some hammers and chisels and started stealing bits of the Parthenon to take back to Britain.
To decorate his house.
Nowadays those artifacts are in the British Museum. Despite the beautiful new Parthenon Museum that’s been built in Athens to safely house them the British government still refuses to return the pieces. Great work, Britain.
Despite Elgin, the Parthenon is still pretty freakin incredible. Far bigger than I expected and apparently very sturdy considering the giant explosion only knocked down one side of it. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around how long ago it was built and how they achieved it. Amazing.
This ampitheatre at The Acropolis is still performed in today
I’d love to see a concert here!
This active dig site is located underneath the museum.
You can see the dig from various places outside the museum.
Even through glass floors!
Looking up three (glass) floors is like looking at an ant farm
The gateway to The Acropolis site
I’m sure this is fine
All six of the korai are replicas that were put in place after five of the originals were moved to the Acropolis Museum for preservation. The sixth was stolen by Lord Elgin (the dickhead) in the 1800’s and is now in the British Museum. In his hubris he caused significant damage to many parts of the Acropolis in his efforts to preserve (steal) the artifacts in order to decorate his house.
Greece is undertaking a monumental (ha!) restoration of The Parthenon to preserve it from further decay as well as partially restore it
The restoration is expected to take decades
They are aligned with wooden pegs in the square holes in the center
One of what must be thousands of pieces strewn around the Parthenon, numbered, cataloged and waiting to be put back in place
Hundreds more pieces of debris being prepped for reconstruction
The skill with which the repairs are being made is amazing
They’re using marble from the same quarry as the ancient Greeks used – in just a couple thousand years you might not even be able to tell the repairs were made!
