The amount of people visiting the New Acropolis Museum in its first month of opening has continued for its second month, giving a total of half a million visitors in the first two months.

From:
Kathimerini (English Edition)

Friday August 28, 2009
In Brief
ACROPOLIS MUSEUM

Over 500,000 people visited new building in last two months

More than half a million people have visited the Acropolis Museum since it opened to the public just over two months ago, the museum’s management said yesterday. More specifically, a total of 523,540 visitors have viewed the museum’s exhibits since June 20. Of these, 60 percent are foreign visitors, museum officials said. During the same two-month period, 409,000 hits by different users from 180 countries were recorded by the museum’s website, http://www.theacropolismuseum.gr.

Following coverage of the decision to censor parts of a film on show in the New Acropolis Museum, it now appears that the decision has been reached that for the time being, the film can continue to be shown in its original un-edited version.

From:
Deutsche Presse Agentur

Acropolis Museum decides to leave film of priests hacking Acropolis
Europe News
Aug 5, 2009, 10:52 GMT

Athens – The new Acropolis Museum decided to leave a short film, depicting long-robed Christians hacking away at the Acropolis, uncut despite angry protests by the powerful Greek Orthodox Church, reports said Wednesday.

Just weeks after its opening, the new museum released an informative short film to visitors about the history of the 5th century BC Parthenon temple which shows figures in long robes hacking away at the monument.
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More coverage of the court ruling that the two buildings on Dionysiou Areopagitou in front of the New Acropolis Museum will not be demolished.

From:
Kathimerini (English Edition)

Wednesday July 15, 2009
Building that blocks museum view spared

The Council of State has intervened to save a treasured art deco building on Dionysiou Areopagitou Street that was threatened with demolition because it blocked the view of the Acropolis for visitors to the New Acropolis Museum.

Sources revealed yesterday that Greece’s highest administrative court has issued a ruling reversing a 2007 judgment that would have allowed authorities to knock down the building. The court found that the building added to the appearance of the neighborhood.
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Following the official opening of the New Acropolis Museum, it is now fully open to the public for the first time. At present, due to high demand all tickets have to be booked in advance, although by the end of the week there will also be some tickets going on sale every day.

From:
Associated Press

Greece’s New Acropolis Museum opens to visitors
1 day ago

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — The new Acropolis Museum opened its gates Sunday to hundreds of visitors eager to explore its vast collection of sculptures and artifacts from ancient Greece.

The museum holds more than 4,000 ancient works, including some of the best surviving classical sculptures that once adorned the Acropolis.
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Greece has built the New Acropolis Museum to re-house artefacts that there was no space for in the old museum on the Acropolis itself. It is no secret though that the key reason for the museum was to help secure the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum.

From:
The Australian

Athens builds a home for Parthenon’s marbles
Helen Vatsikopoulos | June 20, 2009

THE New Acropolis Museum in Athens will never become a landmark building. It will not be like Joern Utzon’s Sydney Opera House, its towering tiled sails reaching over the harbour, or Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, with colossal steel whorls dominating the landscape.

But the city of Athens already has such a building, Phidias’s Parthenon. He designed it in the mid-5th century BC, funded by a hefty stimulus package to rebuild the archaic temples destroyed by the Persians; it’s still standing. The temple atop the Acropolis hill overlooking central Athens survived virtually unscathed for almost 2000 years, only to suffer its worst damage in the past 400: Venetian cannon balls, Ottoman dynamite, a bad restoration and acid rain have all taken their toll, along with an act of vandalism perpetrated by one man, a British diplomat. More on Lord Elgin later.
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The opening of the New Acropolis Museum is proceeding towards the main event on 20th June. Although Greece is waiting until after the opening before announcing any new initiatives for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures, most press reports are still (rightly) observing that the buildings raison d’etre is the creation of a new home for the marbles.

From:
Xinhua

New Acropolis Museum to showcase complete Parthenon sculptures
2009-06-19 12:20:41
by Liang Yeqian

ATHENS, June 19 (Xinhua) — Visitors from across the world will admire the complete sculptures of the famous Parthenon Temple for the first time when the new Acropolis Museum officially opens on June 20.

Dimitros Pantermalis, director of the new museum, told Xinhua that all of the Parthenon Temple sculptures owned by Greece will be displayed on the third floor of the new museum.
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The New Acropolis Museum represents the most important step forward in the campaign to reunify the Parthenon Marbles since they were originally removed from the Acropolis over two hundred years ago. The heirs of Lord Elgin will not be invited tot he ceremony, although dwelling on this aspect seems to be something led by the press rather than an important part of the opening. If the heirs of Lord Elgin see the museum, maybe they will realsie that it is the best location for the sculptures & put their support behind the reunification campaigns.

From:
Scotsman

Greece steps up marbles bid with new museum opening
Published Date: 21 May 2009
By Renee Maltezou in Athens

GREECE will open a new Acropolis museum in June, with the aim of bringing back historical artefacts exhibited in the British Museum in London.
Greece has long campaigned to retrieve the Parthenon sculptures, saying they were an integral part of one of the world’s most important monuments, but the British Museum has refused to return the treasures.

The Acropolis museum, built below the Parthenon and the other classical age marble temples of the Acropolis, has experienced years of delay with legal battles and missed deadlines plaguing its construction.
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Further details have now been released of the opening events planned for the New Acropolis Museum’s inauguration in June. The events will be spread over a number of days as the sheer number of people invited would not fit in the building for one single mass opening event.

From:
Kathimerini (English Edition)

Tuesday May 5, 2009
Celebrating beneath the Acropolis
Inaugural events for new museum scheduled to last four days and include long guestlist
Work in progress. Crews working outside the New Acropolis Museum on Makriyianni Street. The much-awaited museum is scheduled to open its doors next month. (Photo: Nikos Bardopoulos)
By Iota Sykka – Kathimerini

The celebrations for the inauguration of the New Acropolis Museum are set to last four days. Though festive in spirit, they will be far from the extravaganzas envisioned by previous culture ministers. Essentially, the celebrations, which start on June 20, will act as a platform for a wide-ranging meeting on both a political and a scientific level.

In the meantime, Greek Culture Minister Antonis Samaras is working on the project on a daily basis.
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Gradually more information is becoming available on the nature of the opening events planned for the New Acropolis Museum. Various dignitaries visiting Greece have also already been given a preview of the site.

From:
Agence France Presse

Acropolis museum to open in June: minister
26-04-09

ATHENS (AFP) — The ultra-modern Acropolis museum, situated below the ancient landmark that defines the Greek capital Athens, will belatedly open in June, Greek Culture Minister Antonis Samaras said Sunday.

“We are preparing a jewel of a museum whose opening on June 20 will be a major, global event,” said Samaras after giving European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso a guided tour of the venue.
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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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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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