The Parthenon was originally a religious monument although this meaning of it has been largely lost, being displaced by the building’s position as a national (& international) icon. Religion regularly comes back into its story though – both throughout the history of the building (which was also a church & a mosque) & has recently been highlighted again by the Greek Orthodox church’s objection to parts of a video on display in the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
Religion Dispatches

When Religion Goes Missing in the Modern Museum
By Louis A. Ruprecht
August 4, 2009

The brand-new Acropolis Museum, designed to showcase the repatriated plunder of another century, has instead a few other things to offer — among them, views of other museumgoers from beneath, as well as a newly censored video showing Greek Christians hard at work destroying Classical art.

I. A Museum Half-Full, Half-Empty

On the week of the summer solstice, that most energized and sacred week in the pagan calendar, the Greek government opened a new national museum. The plans for the building, designed by Swiss-born architect Bernard Tschumi, were first revealed at the Venice Biennale in 2002. They have been completed in ambitious fashion. But the new museum is empty.
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