As part of the Acropolis restoration, research is being done into the use of lasers for cleaning the structural elements of the building in a similar way to the sculptures.

From:
Russia Today

Features
November 6, 2008, 17:05
Athens’ Acropolis to shine again

One of the world’s most cherished monuments is undergoing a long-overdue and well-deserved pampering.

Decades of pollution from cars and industry wreaked upon on the Greek capital have caused a dense, black coating encrusting the marble of the temples of the Acropolis.

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Further coverage of yesterday’s return of a fragment of the Parthenon Sculptures by the Vatican following previous requests. The British Museum state that this does not alter anything - they continue to follow this line though, despite events carrying on outside their reach suggesting that the rest of the world is moving in a different direction.

It is notable, that whilst the Palermo & Heidelberg fragments already returned were from relatively small museums, the Vatican Museums are a vast collection by any standards - this shows that larger institutions which tend to be less flexibly governed are also able to return pieces of the sculptures.

From:
International Herald Tribune

Vatican returns Parthenon fragment to Greece
The Associated Press
Published: November 5, 2008

ATHENS, Greece: The ancient marble head of a youth was fitted into place Wednesday at a museum in Athens in a deal that Greek officials hope will serve as a model for returning other treasures.

The one-year loan from the Vatican’s Museo Gregoriano Etrusco could be used as a way to regain other iconic Parthenon sculptures that have been systematically removed from Greece in the past. Several European museums — especially the British Museum in London — hold Parthenon artifacts and Greece has long campaigned for their return.

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The Vatican have so far only returned one piece of the Parthenon Marbles from their collection - this article however hints that another of the two remaining ones will be on its way to Greece in the coming months.

From:
Athens News Agency

11/06/2008
Vatican returns Parthenon fragment

A fragment of a Parthenon frieze returned to Greece by the Vatican’s Museum Gregoriano Etrusco was presented by Culture Minister Michalis Liapis stressing that “this gesture by one of the most important museums in Europe sets an example for others to follow and eventually restore the unity of the Parthenon Marbles”.

The special event on Wednesday was held at the New Museum of the Acropolis in the presence of Vatican’s ambassador to Greece Patrick Coveney, Greece’s ambassador to the Vatican M. Hiskakis, head of the Vatican museum’s classical antiquities department Giandomenico Spinola and Organization for the Construction of the New Museum of the Acropolis President Prof. Dimitris Pantermalis.

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Some further coverage of the loan to Greece of a Parthenon Frieze fragment by the Vatican.

Dorothy King has covered this & posted some images of the frieze fragment (& of the other two fragments that remain in the Vatican) on her website.

From:
Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Vatican returns fragment of Parthenon Marbles to Greece
Submitted by Mohit Joshi on Wed, 11/05/2008 - 14:29.

Athens - The Vatican returned a small fragment of the Parthenon Marbles to Athens Wednesday on a one-year loan, setting in motion what Greece hopes will be a precedent for the British Museum to return the sculptures it has.

“This is a gesture from one of the most important museums in Europe,” Greek Culture Minister Michalis Liapis said.

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Following the return of the Heidelberg fragment in 2006 & the Palermo fragment earlier this year, the Vatican has now also returned a fragment from the frieze on a one year loan. The Vatican still holds two other fragments from the Parthenon sculptures in their collection on which negotiations are still continuing.

From:
Reuters

Vatican lends Parthenon Marbles fragment to Greece
Wed Nov 5, 2008 7:30am EST
By Daniel Flynn

ATHENS (Reuters) - The Vatican returned a small fragment of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece on Wednesday on a one-year loan, fuelling calls for the British Museum to hand back its own priceless sculptures from the ancient temple.

The loan of the fragment, one of three in the Vatican Museum’s vast collection of antiquities, follows a request for its return by Greece’s late Orthodox Archbishop Christopoulos at a meeting with Pope Benedict in 2006.

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Even before the New Acropolis Museum has properly opened, it has become one of the key reasons given for why people should visit Athens. As such, it provides an amazing public relations tool in Greece’s endeavours to retrieve the Elgin Marbles.

From:
Austin American Statesman

TRAVEL
Athens puts on chic face for its traditional sights and sounds
By Shelley Emling
INTERNATIONAL STAFF
Saturday, November 01, 2008

ATHENS, Greece - Not so long ago, many travelers dismissed Athens, with its scruffy streets, traffic pandemonium, and lackadaisical service, as mostly a jumping-off point for some really gorgeous Greek island.

But since the 2004 Olympics this capital city, bathed in millennia of history, has been rejuvenated for the new millennium.

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Works on the Acropolis Restoration will include the installation of new sensors to measure the effects of earthquakes on the monuments.

From:
Associated Press

Scientists to measure quake effect on Acropolis
By ELENA BECATOROS – 58 minutes ago

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — For thousands of years the Acropolis has withstood earthquakes, weathered storms and endured temperature extremes, from scorching summers to winter snow.

Now scientists are drawing on the latest technology to install a system that will record just how much nature is affecting the 2,500-year-old site. They hope their findings will help identify areas that could be vulnerable, allowing them to target restoration and maintenance.

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Some parts of the restoration works on the Acropolis will be completed in the coming months, allowing visitors their first sight of parts of the building for some years without scaffolding in the foreground. As part of the project, a virtual reality presentation on the history of the restoration work is planned for the New Acropolis Museum, so that visitors can get a better understanding of what is one of the most complex projects of its kind ever undertaken.

From:
Athens News Agency

10/31/2008
Acropolis restoration works

Culture Minister Mihalis Liapis on Thursday inspected works for the restoration of the Athens Acropolis, after which he praised the effort underway.

“The work to preserve and highlight the monuments provides a unique experience for visitors to the Sacred Rock, since a more comprehensive image of the Acropolis is formed that allows the monuments to be better recognised and understood,” he said.

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The New Acropolis Museum represents Greece’s most ambitious attempt to reclaim the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum.

From:
CNN

New Acropolis Museum ready for Marbles
By Eleni Gage
29 October 2008

It’s an incongruous sight: a super-modern, glass-walled building set at the foot of the ancient Acropolis.

But while the New Acropolis Museum, designed by New York-based architect Bernard Tschumi, may appear to defy Athens’s great history, it is, in fact, the city’s most ambitious attempt to reclaim its cultural patrimony: built to hold archaeological finds spanning 2,500 years, including the absent Elgin Marbles (portions of the Parthenon frieze), which the Greek government has been trying to recover from the British Museum since the mid 1800s.

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The British Museum continues to hang onto the Elgin Marbles, but many in Greece are now suggesting that the 2012 Olympics in London should be used a a deadline for return, with the Olympic flame being handed over in exchange for the Marbles.

From:
American Chronicle

Britain must rethink the case of Parthenon Marbles Restitution
Nicolas Mottas
October 26, 2008

It was in 1801 when the then British ambassador in Constantinople, Thomas Bruce (the known as Lord Elgin), obtained a firman from the Ottoman authorities taking permission to remove sculptures from the Athens’ Parthenon.

Two centuries later - in fact 207 years later - the British capital, London, is preparing to host the 30th Olympiad in 2012. The ancient masterpieces of the Parthenon still remain in the British Museum, around 2440km far from their original place, as long as the Greek demand for the Marbles restoration has been collided to the years-long denial of the Museum’s administration. However, two facts create a new dynamic in favour of the campaign for the restitution of the Parthenon sculptures: the construction of the New Acropolis Museum and the 2012 London Olympics.

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Despite attempts to publicise the fact that most classical Greek sculptures were originally coloured, in the eyes of the public, they are still very much perceived as pristine & white. Nowhere has this problem of misconstrued opinion been more apparent, than in the 1930s cleaning of the Elgin Marbles under the instruction of Lord Duveen.

A new exhibition in Germany hopes to change people’s understandings of the sculptures, with numerous coloured reconstructions to give people a better idea of how they might have originally looked.

From:
Artdaily

Friday, October 24, 2008
Gods in Color Opens at Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung

FRANKFURT.- Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung presents Gods in Color, on view through February 15, 2009. Antique marble sculpture was not white, but colored. This is amply and overwhelmingly attested to by ancient literary sources. Whereas the incontestable fact that ancient sculpture was colored was suppressed during the Italian Renaissance, it was recalled in the nineteenth century; in the twentieth century, it once again paled into insignificance, giving way to an aestheticism directed at clarity. Numerous traces of the original polychromy in antique sculpture have survived. They bear testimony to Greek and Roman statues having worn elaborately ornamented garments painted with precious pigments.

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During talks with The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Costas Karamanlis, the Greek Prime Minister, has again raised the issue of the Parthenon Marbles. Gordon Brown’s response to the request is not mentioned. This may be the first time that the issue has been raised directly with Gordon Brown, but it has been discussed with Tony Blair on numerous occasions.

From:
Athens News Agency

10/22/2008
Karamanlis discusses global crisis with Brown

The Inner Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis will convene on Wednesday to discuss Interior Ministry’s issues. On Tuesday, the impact of the global financial crisis on Europe and the European economies were at the focus of talks between Greek prime minister Costas Karamanlis and his British counterpart Gordon Brown in London.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Karamanlis praised Brown’s contribution to the common effort for amelioration of the crisis. He said the primary target of the efforts was to minimize the consequences of the international financial crisis on the lives of the citizens and on the real economy, and particularly on the financially weaker brackets.

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