The grand inauguration event for the New Acropolis Museum has finally taken place, so now the general public will be allowed admission to the building to see it in its completed state for the first time.

From:
Associated Press

New Acropolis Museum opens with lavish party
By NICHOLAS PAPHITIS

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Gods, heroes and long-dead mortals stepped off their plinths into the evening sky of Athens on Saturday during the lavish launch of the new Acropolis Museum, a decades-old dream that Greece hopes will also help reclaim a cherished part of its heritage from Britain.

The digital animated display on the museum walls ended years of delays and wrangling over the ultramodern building, set among apartment blocks and elegant neoclassical houses at the foot of the Acropolis hill.
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The opening of the New Acropolis Museum later this year will represent one of the most significant events in the museums world for some time – not necessarily because of the building’s facilities, but because of what it will stand for. The question remains though over whether the British Museum will acknowledge this fact & allow the Elgin Marbles to be reunited in their rightful home.

From:
The Sunday Times

From The Sunday Times
July 6, 2008
The new Greek Acropolis Museum
The Acropolis will this year have a museum fit for Greece’s greatest treasure, the Elgin Marbles
Mark Hodson

A new museum will open in Athens later this year. No big deal, you might think. You’d be wrong. The New Acropolis Museum is not merely a dazzling piece of modernist architecture, but the latest gambit in a 200-year campaign for the return of the Elgin Marbles.

The museum, which has been 30 years in the planning and has cost the Greek government more than £100m, will at last provide a permanent home for the greatest treasures of the classical period, safe from the city’s corrosive, polluted air.
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More coverage of Stelios Haji-Ioannou’s proposed advertising campaign in the British Press, aimed at encouraging the reunification of the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum.

From:
Scotland on Sunday

EasyJet founder gets Elgin marbles campaign rolling
Published Date: 15 June 2008
By Liz Longden

THE multi-millionaire founder of easyJet, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, is set to launch a personal campaign for the reuniting of the Elgin marbles.
The controversial marble sculptures, which have been at the centre of a diplomatic dispute between Britain and Greece for decades, are split between the British Museum in London and the New Acropolis Museum in Athens.

However, the Greek-Cypriot entrepreneur will take out full-page adverts in a number of British newspapers this week to argue the case for keeping the artworks in a single collection.
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