William St Clair, Author of Lord Elgin and the Marbles, is giving the 21st annual Runciman lecture at Kings College London tomorrow.

From:
Kings College, London

21st Annual Runciman Lecture
Thursday 2 February 2012
Great Hall, Strand Campus, 18.00
Looking at the Athenian Acropolis: from modern times to antiquity
Speaker: William St Clair

William St Clair will discuss the ways in which the Acropolis has historically been interpreted by three main constituencies, the people of Athens, visitors from abroad, and those who only saw Athens in their imaginations with the help of pictures. Beginning in modern times when current viewing conventions were invented, and going back through chronological layers, he suggests how his approach can improve our understanding of how the Acropolis was understood in antiquity.

His starting point is that it was the viewers who made the meanings.
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The Acropolis in Athens is now going to be open for longer. It is already better than it used to be though, as I remember visiting it in the 1990s, when it seemed that it was barely open in the afternoons during the winter months.

From:
The Independent

Longer opening hours for Athens Acropolis
AFP
Saturday, 21 May 2011

Greece is to extend the opening hours of the Acropolis in Athens due to public demand, Culture Minister Pavlos Geroulanosin announced Thursday.

The site will open from 8:00 am (0500 GMT) to 19:00 pm (1600 GMT) year-round after staffing changes prompted by a restructure of the country’s public bodies.
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Apostolos Santas became famous in 1941, when he tore down the Nazi flag that had been raised on the Acropolis in Athens.

From:
Athens News Agency

Resistance figure Santas dies
06/13/2011

(ΑΝΑ-ΜPA) — One of the two men who secretly climbed atop the emblematic Acropolis Hill in central Athens and took down the Swastika in the early morning hours of May 31, 1941 – a defiant and extraordinarily symbolic act of resistance at the beginning of the Axis occupation of Greece (1941-44) – died on Saturday at the age of 89.

Apostolos Santas passed away in Athens.
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A museum in the Netherlands is returning a fragment from the Acropolis that was taken by a Dutch tourist as a souvenir fifty years ago. This is a similar sort of case to a fragment from the Colosseum in Rome, that was returned from the USA in 2009. The Museum of Antiquities in Leiden wants other museums to follow their example – unfortunately most seem intent on taking a less enlightened approach to the issue.

From:
RNW

Piece of Acropolis returned after 50 years
Published on 11 April 2011 – 11:09am

The Museum of Antiquities in the Dutch city of Leiden will return to Greece a small marble fragment of the Acropolis: the ancient fortress and temple complex in the capital Athens.

Newspaper de Volkskrant reports that the piece of marble, probably part of a cornerstone located just above one of the Acropolis’ columns, was taken by a Dutch tourist more than fifty years ago.
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The Russian Magazine Ellada has an article in it about an exhibition of photos of the Parthenon by Apostolos Papapostolou.

From:
Greek Reporter

Parthenon Photo Exhibition Profiled in “Ellada” Greek-Russian Magazine
Posted on 25 March 2011 by Polina Dimea

A special feature in the Russian magazine “Ellada” (Greece), which is published in Moscow, was dedicated to the “Marbles” photo exhibition and its creator Mr. Apostolos Papapostolou. The above mentioned magazine is the only printed medium in Russia specialized in topics related to Greece and Cyprus.

The article outlines the profile and work of Mr. Papapostolou, who is a professor in the Technological Educational Institution (TEI) of Athens. It describes how art and technology are his big loves, and actually a motivation for a remarkable photographic approach of the Parthenon marbles.
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More coverage of the metopes from the Parthenon that have been discovered buried within the walls of the Acropolis.

From:
Agence France Presse

Long-lost marble fragments found in Acropolis walls
(AFP) – Mar 3, 2011

ATHENS — Archaeologists in Greece have located long-lost fragments from the 2,500-year-old Parthenon built into the outer walls of the Athens Acropolis, a supervising official said on Thursday.

The fragments were pinpointed after a vertical scan of the 20-metre (65-foot) walls using a camera mounted on a modified weather balloon, says Mary Ioannidou, head of the Acropolis Restoration Service.
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Unfortunately, unlike other years, due to issues with large numbers of visitors in previous years, the Acropolis will not have a late night full moon opening this August. Many other Archaeological sites in Greece will be open late however.

From:
Kathimerini (English Edition)

Wednesday August 3, 2011
Acropolis closed for full moon night

Officials said on Wednesday that the Acropolis, the most popular ancient monument in the Greek capital, will not open on the night of the August full moon following extensive damage to the site last year.

Fool moon night in August is the only time when archeological sites remain open after sunset.
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Despite coming in for a lot of bad press recently in Germany for economic reasons, the country’s media are being much more supportive to Greece in their appreciation of the efforts being put into restoring the Acropolis.

From:
Greek Reporter

German Media Praises Acropolis Restoration Efforts
Posted on 09 January 2011 by Venetia Aftzigianni

The German media is impressed by the quality of renovations on the Acropolis. Begining in the mid-1970′s, the project has involved painstaking repairs on major monuments, including the Parthenon, the Erechtheion and Athena Nike Temple, and the Acropolis walls. The architectural masterpieces suffered from pollution and a flawed reparation attempt in the 1930′s. Workers used iron clamps in their repairs that eventually rusted and cracked the marble.

German journalists have uncharacteristically praised Greek efforts.
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The New Acropolis Museum, as one of the most recently opened tourist sites in Greece is lucky enough to have high quality facilities for visitors, such as disabled access provisions. Many other sites in Greece are less fortunate however. A new initiative aims to try and solve this problem by upgrading many of the other sites to make them more easily accessible to all visitors.

From:
Athens News Agency

11/26/2010
Plan on sites services

ANa-Mpa/The culture and tourism ministry on Wednesday outlined a plan to improve services at Greek museums and archaeological sites, especially in terms of disabled access and availability of water.

The new programme follows a study that revealing a lack of vital services in some 150 museums around the country, including some of the most important and most popular sites.
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After a brief respite from its cloak of scaffolding, the next phase of restoration works has begun on the Acropolis, with the return of the scaffolding to the Propylaia.

From:
The Independent

Greece’s Acropolis in scaffolds as restoration resumes
AFP
Saturday, 13 November 2010

Scaffolding once again appeared on the Acropolis in Athens Thursday as work resumed after a brief pause on a decades-long restoration project.

“New scaffolding has been constructed on the central part of the Propylaea to restore the original marble,” said Mairi Ioannidou, the head of Acropolis Restoration Service.
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More coverage of the restoration works to the Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis that have recently ended.

From:
Athens News Agency

10/21/2010
Temple of Athena Nike on Acropolis restored

(ANA-MPA) — Standing a full metre taller than before and without the scaffolding that enveloped it for the past decade, the slim temple of Athena Nike atop the Acropolis in central Athens was again in full view as of this month following the completion of restoration work.

The small temple was among the ancient marble structures on the Acropolis that had suffered the most extensive damage over the years, even as far back as 1687 when it was badly damaged by a mortar shell lobbed by besieging Venetians against an Ottoman garrison barricaded on the hill.
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Visitors familiar with the Acropolis site in Athens who visited since 2004 will have been surprised to see that for a few years, the temple of Athena Nike that overlooks the entrance to the site had completely disappeared.

The entire building was dismantled for restoration & the plinth on which it sat was reinforced to remedy the subsidence that had occurred over the years. The temple parts were gradually assembles piece by piece & this building is now complete once more. These works form a part of the overall restoration on the Acropolis Site that has been ongoing for over thirty years.

From:
Associated Press

AP Interview: Acropolis’ Nike temple rises again
By NICHOLAS PAPHITIS – Sep 7, 2010

ATHENS, Greece — After a decade-long facelift, the ancient Greek temple of Athena Nike is back up, patched up and unfettered on the Acropolis.

The slender marble building first erected in the 5th century B.C. was unburdened of its scaffolding in recent days — 10 years after being completely dismantled for repairs.
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