Athens - To design a museum that is accessible and welcoming
is a daunting task for any architect. To create one to stand at the
foot of the Acropolis, revered as one of the great achievements of
man, could be considered a nightmare.
In accepting the challenge, Swiss-born architect Bernard Tschumi
pulled off an impressive accomplishment - a building that is
majestic, while complementing the architectural grandeur of the
Parthenon.
The new museum, which is scheduled to open on Saturday, is meant
to demonstrate once and for all that the Greeks can look after the
hundreds of marble sculptures, friezes and metopes from the ancient
Acropolis as well as, if not better than, the British Museum that has
housed them for close to two centuries.
More than half of the surviving Parthenon sculptures were removed
from the temple by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman
Empire in the early 19th century, and sold to the British Museum.
Britain's government maintains that the sculptures, which include
depictions of religious and mythological scenes, legally belong to
the British Museum and insists that they will never be returned.
The British have long argued that Athens lacks a proper display
space to ensure the safety and preservation of these priceless
antiquities.
The Greeks, it appears, are set to finally prove them wrong.
'The Acropolis Museum is a local museum. It is a museum solely
dedicated to the Acropolis - nothing more, nothing less,' Alexandros
Mantis, director of the Acropolis Ephorate, told the German Press
Agency dpa.
'Unlike other big European museums such as the Louvre in Paris and
the British Museum in London, this museum is the only one of its
kind, which includes finds and artefacts from one single
archaeological site - the Acropolis.'
Situated on a site filled with ruins from 5th century BC to the
12th century, the three-storey, 130-million-euro (182-million-dollar)
museum was controversial almost from its conception.
Under the watchful eye of hundreds of archaeologists, Tschumi
found a way to display the treasure trove of relics discovered during
construction by raising the entire building on huge concrete columns
or structural supports, which enable the museum's entry plaza and
first floor to hover over the site.
He also added wide expanses of glass that are cut into the floor
throughout the museum to allow visitors to look down into the ruins
as they move around.
'There are two things that Tschumi had to take into account when
designing the museum - designing the upper gallery to the exact
dimensions and orientation of the Parthenon and accommodating the
excavations below - an enormous project,' said archaeologist Stamatia
Eleftheratou.
Pointing to an ancient road from the concrete canopy that extends
over the main entry plaza, Eleftheratou said the first level of the
museum is actually the dig itself and the subterranean remains of the
ancient town it uncovered.
Hundreds of archaeologists worked on the excavation for seven
years and filled in the site with truckloads of sand for protection
during construction.
They can now be seen painstakingly uncovering remains of villas,
bathhouses, cisterns and workshops for the museum's opening.
'Thankfully, due to the construction of the new museum we were
able to conduct the biggest ever dig within the walls of Athens'
ancient city and were given an insight into people's daily habits and
the way they worshipped,' said Eleftheratou.
The site uncovered relics ranging from children's toys and cooking
utensils to a near perfectly preserved 4th century BC marble bust of
Aristotle and a statue of the eastern deity Zeus Heliopolites.
'We wanted the museum to be natural procession that imitates the
walk up the Acropolis slope to the Parthenon temple at the top of the
hill,' said Mantis.
'The idea is to keep the conditions as close to those of the
original Acropolis as possible, with natural sunlight and no glass
showcases.'
The main gallery, with its smooth marble floors and polished
concrete pillars, is home to the museum's permanent collection of
4,000 objects, including five of the original six Caryatidis or Kores
of the Erectheion as well as sculptures of gods dating from the 5th
century BC Archaic period.
The highlight is the top floor gallery - the museum's centrepiece.
Enclosed entirely in glass and rotated 23 degrees to parallel the
Parthenon, which is only 244 metres away, the gallery provides
visitors with a direct view of the ancient temple. The layout is a
copy of the Parthenon, with a colonnade set around a sacred inner
temple chamber.
Here, the 160-metre-long frieze has been mounted in an unbroken
sequence, with the original Greek blocks of the frieze coated in a
soft brown patina standing alongside the white plaster copies of the
sections removed by Elgin.
Athens holds only about 40 per cent of the remaining marble
sculptures. The majority are on display at the British Museum or are
with private collectors.
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