The restoration of the Propylaia which forms the gateway to the Acropolis has now been completed, ending another chapter in the Acropolis’s extensive restoration programme.

From:
Athens News Agency

12/22/2009
Restoration of Acropolis Propylaea completed

All scaffolding and cranes were fully removed from the Propylaea of the Acropolis, the monumental entrance, or gateway, to the Acropolis, on the weekend following completion of the restoration work on the central building of the structure.

The Propylaea was built under the direction of Athenian leader Pericles, but the building itself was designed by the architect Mnesicles, while construction began in 437 BCE and was terminated in 432 BCE, while the building was still unfinished.
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In addition to this site, for some time now it has been possible to follow Elginism on its associated Twitter feed & Facebook page. In an attempt to increase the multimedia aspects of the site, you can now also join Elginism’s Flickr photostream. At present the photostream consists of archive images – some of which I’ve already made available through other sources. In the coming months though I hope to further integrate these various aspects of the site so that they tie in more closely to the main site.

A youtube channel for Elginism will also be available soon.

View Elginism’s photostream on Flickr here.

Current photosets include:

• New Acropolis Museum opening.
• The Acropolis (including many areas not normally accessible to the public).
• Protest outside the British Museum (see original post for more details).

Greece is continuing the tradition of previous years, with a late night opening of the Acropolis site in Athens (along with numerous other sites) to coincide with the full moon.

From:
Athens News Agency

08/06/2009
August Full Moon events

The August full moon has always been a special event in Greece, as it is the time when the moon is so close as to give the impression that one only has to reach out to touch it.

In recent years, the Culture Ministry has established a tradition of opening up a large number of the countries archaeological sites, monuments and museums throughout the country on the night of the August Full Moon.
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More coverage of the reversal of the original decision to censor depictions of the iconoclasm from a short fim about the history of the Athenian Acropolis which is on display in the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
Agence France-Presse

Agence France-Presse – 8/4/2009 4:02 PM GMT
Acropolis Museum backs down in Parthenon video row

Greece’s new Acropolis Museum on Tuesday said it will undo controversial editing of a video showing the Parthenon temple vandalised by early Christians in a row that has sparked complaints of Church-backed censorship.

The video will be restored after its maker, renowned French-Greek filmaker Costa-Gavras, said he meant to attach no blame to Christian priests for the destruction, museum director Dimitris Pantermalis said.
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Christopher Hitchens writes about the reasons why the New Acropolis Museum will be the most suitable location for the display of all surviving fragments of the Parthenon Sculptures.

From:
New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor
A Home for the Marbles
By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Published: June 18, 2009

LONDON — This weekend, the new museum of the Acropolis will open its doors in Athens, in a striking modern building situated at the foot of the rock itself.

For a long time, it has not really been possible for a visitor to Greece to visit the buildings on that most famous of all hills, and also the sculpture that used to adorn them in the days of the cult of Pallas Athena.
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When the New Acropolis Museum is mentioned, people’s first thought is of the Elgin Marbles. It does however contain many other artefacts – some previously displayed in the old museum on the Acropolis, others never publicly on show before. Their are artefacts from well before & well after the construction of the Periclean Acropolis – as well as the finds from the site of the museum itself which are retained beneath the building.

From:
Athens News Agency

06/25/2009
Tour of the permanent collections of the New Acropolis Museum

The New Acropolis Museum, which will be officially inaugurated on Saturday, contains five Permanent Collections: The Acropolis Slopes, divided into sub-categories on The Settlement, and The Sanctuary; The Acropolis during the Archaic Period, with sub-categories on The Hekatompedon, The Ancient Temple, abd The Votives; The Parthenon, with sub-categories on The Monument, The Metopes, The Pediments, and The Frieze; Other Monuments of the Classical Acropolis, with sub-categories on The Propylaia, The Temple of Athena Nike, and The Erectheion; and Other Collections, with sub-categories on The Sanctuary of Artemis Vravronia, The Votives of the Classical and Hellenist Periods, and The Votives of the Roman Period. ANA-MPA takes its readers on a tour of the collections, in three parts, leading up to the official opening. The Museum opened its electronic gates (www.theacropolismuseum.gr) on Monday.
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British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has visited Athens & whilst there visited the Acropolis. It is unclear whether any of the meetings he attended in Greece talked about the Elgin Marbles, but now that he has seen the Acropolis for himself, it will be interesting to see if this affects his opinion on the way that the government handles the issue of the reunification of the Elgin Marbles.

From:
Athens News Agency

05/27/2009
Miliband in Athens for talks

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, currently on an official visit to Greece, held talks with Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and then Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis on Tuesday. These covered a range of issues, including the Cyprus problem, Turkey’s European accession course, developments in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, climate change, and a missile launch test by North Korea.

In statements after meeting Bakoyannis, Miliband stressed the need for a solution to the Cyprus issue “by Cypriots and for Cypriots” and said that Britain was determined to play only a supportive role in the vitally important negotiations underway, which had to make progress within the next few months.
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The Acropolis in Athens was chosen as the starting point for Earth Hour – something that highlights the international significance that a building well over 2000 years old still continues to hold today.

From:
Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Lights dimmed on the Acropolis for Earth Hour
Science News

Athens – Lights went out on the Acropolis for Earth Hour 2009, and hundreds of residents in the Athens neighborhood of Plaka walked around with lanterns beneath the ancient rock for an hour to highlight the threat from climate change.

Environmental group WWF, which started the global event to turn out the lights at prominent landmarks, homes and businesses, is hoping 1 billion people will take part this year to draw attention to climate change.
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Greece is continuing to try & put a permanent stop to the strikes that have plagued the Acropolis during the last year.

From:
Kathimerini (English Edition)

Saturday March 14, 2009 – Archive
Attempt to end Acropolis row

An ongoing dispute between Culture Ministry contract workers and the government, which has led to the Acropolis being shut five times in the last two weeks, could be on the way to being solved but at a cost of more than 9 million euros.

The government tabled an amendment in Parliament yesterday that seeks to address at least in part the grievances of the ministry employees who work at the Acropolis and other ancient sites as well as museums.
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Following a plea by Greece’s president, the Acropolis has now re-opened following strikes that have closed it for the last week.

From:
Athens News Agency

03/12/2009
Acropolis opens to public

Culture Ministry’s employees on Thursday cancelled their 24-hour strike and opened the archaelogical site of the Acropolis for visitors, in an act of good will after reassurances by Culture Minister Antonis Samaras for resolving the problem of paying contract staff working at the culture ministry through a bill to be tabled in Parliament within days.
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Hi-tech geo-spatial systems are being used to create a three dimensional representation of the Athenian Acropolis. Highly detailed digital models such as this can be used both in the restoration & cataloguing of the monument, but also as a resource to allow visitors to explore areas that they would not otherwise be able to access & to allow it to be seen from positions that would be otherwise impossible to reach. As museums enter the twenty-first century, integrating archaeology & technology in this ways is becoming increasingly important. Constructing modern buildings in three dimensions is relatively easy – but to accurately reconstruct ancient sites with complex terrain & parts of the building missing etc requires far more sophisticated technology.

From:
Spatial News

LPS Instrumental in 3D Modeling of the Acropolis

Norcross, GA – ERDAS announces that LPS was recently selected and utilized for a significant project to create 3D models of the Acropolis in Greece. LPS is an integrated suite of photogrammetry software tools for generating terrain models, producing orthophotos and extracting 3D features.

This project, called the “Development of GIS at the Acropolis of Athens” was financed by the European Union and the Government of Greece, and supervised by the Acropolis Restoration Service, Hellenic Ministry of Culture. The partners in this project are ELLINIKI PHOTOGRAMMETRIKI Ltd (ELPHO), Athens and GEOTECH O.E., Athens. GEOINFORMATION S.A., the authorized ERDAS distributor in Greece provided photogrammetric support to ELPHO for this project.
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Greece’s president Karolos Papoulias has now called for an end to the strikes that are currently closing Athens’s Acropolis to visitors. Whilst there is sympathy for the strikers, their actions have the potential to cause major damage to the Greece’s tourist trade.

From:
Associated Press

Greece: Strikers close Acropolis for back pay
1 day ago

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Striking Culture Ministry employees closed the Acropolis to visitors Wednesday for the fifth time in two weeks, turning hundreds of tourists away from the ancient site.

The protesters are mostly contract workers demanding permanent jobs and back pay. Hundreds of visitors stood outside the entrance as strikers handed out fliers detailing their demands.
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