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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More coverage of the removal of depictions of the iconoclasm from a film on display in the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
Agence France Presse

Acropolis Museum accused of muzzling filmmaker
(AFP) – 20 hours ago

ATHENS — A rights group has accused Greece’s new Acropolis Museum of censoring a video that shows early Christians vandalising antiquities after complaints attributed to the country’s Orthodox Church.

The Greek section of the Helsinki Monitor (GHM) on human rights on Monday said it had filed an injunction application against the museum, demanding that the video by prominent French filmmaker Costa-Gavras be restored in full.
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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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As a high precision modern restoration project using the latest technology, the Acropolis Restoration project that has been running for the last 30 years must be without parallel. Some of the work was needed to negate previous problematic restoration works on the site, but much of it was necessary purely to stabilise the buildings & re-incorporate new fragments that had been excavated from the site.

From:
Deutsche Presse Agentur

2,350 tons of marble restored, replaced for Acropolis restoration
Europe News
May 29, 2009, 13:32 GMT

Athens – Some 2,350 tons of marble were restored or replaced over the past three decades for the massive project to restore the ancient Acropolis monuments, reports said Friday.

Maria Ioannidou, a senior Culture Ministry official was quoted by the Greek daily Kathimerini as saying more than 1,000 architects and archaeologists restored or replaced a total of 2,350 tons of marble during the restoration project.
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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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For years the ancient Acropolis has been one of the main reasons attracting visitors to Athens. This year though, a new attraction in the form of the New Acropolis Museum will act as an added reason to visit the city, providing the perfect complement to the Parthenon & Acropolis site.

From:
Chicago Tribune

Sprawling Athens still centered on the Acropolis
Rick Steves Tribune Media Services
May 3, 2009

A century and a half ago, Athens was a humble, forgotten city of about 8,000 people. Today one out of every three Greeks packs into this city of about 4 million.

Athens has been famous for its sprawl, noise and pollution. My advice has long been to see the big sights, then get out. But visiting it recently to research a new guidebook, I’ve seen a dramatic change. The city has made a concerted effort to curb pollution, clean up the streets and make them pedestrian-friendly, spiff up the museums, build a new airport and invest in one of Europe’s better public-transit systems.
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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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