More on the preliminary opening of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens.

From:
Athens News Agency

23-12-07
New Acropolis Museum entrance opens with exhibition

The entrance to the new Acropolis Musuem, located some 400 metres from the actual Acropolis in downtown Athens, opened to the public on Saturday with an inaugural exhibition titled “the Museum and its Excavations”.

The remains of a long-buried section of ancient Athens came to light with the excavation works for the new state-on-the-art museum, which revealed cobblestone roads, dwellings, baths and even the foundations of workshops.

The entire excavated area, in fact, was covered by a massive glass floor to allow visitors the opportunity to view the ancient neighborhood when touring the museum’s ground floor. Moveable artifacts found at the site will also be displayed.

The exhibition will remain open until March 31 for two hours daily (10 a.m. to 12 noon), except holidays, with the entrance still the only accessible area of the close-to-completion venue for the public.

The first transfer of antiquities from the old Acropolis museum to the new ultra-modern facility began in mid October with the relay of a 2.3-ton section of the Parthenon’s northern frieze via a system of three gigantic cranes set up on the site and its placement on the top floor of the new museum, in the Parthenon Hall.

The entire transfer operation of the bulkiest and heaviest exhibits is due for completion in early 2008.

The total 246 sculptures that will be transferred to the new Museum, designed by New York-based Swiss-born architect Bernard Tschumi, at a cost estimated at 1.6 million euros.

Greece has eagerly promoted the idea of building a new Acropolis Museum given the continuing international pressure on the British Museum to repatriate the Parthenon Marbles.