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.
She said preservation experts have used 500 cubic meters of new
marble from ancient quarries located on Mount Pendeli, the site just
north of Athens where the ancient Greeks originally found the marble
used to build the Acropolis monuments.
Thirty years into the project to restore the 2,500-year-old
Acropolis monuments, officials have said the end is at last in sight.
'We still need approximately 15.8 million euros (21.8 million
dollars) to complete the restoration of the west side of the
Acropolis,' said Ioannidou.
The project has involved painstaking repairs to the main Parthenon
and Athena Nike temples, as well as the massive Propylea Gate.
All three suffered from decades of exposure to Athens pollution
and a flawed restoration attempt in the 1930s, when workers used iron
clamps in their repairs that eventually rusted and cracked the
marble.
With the Athena Nike temple, an elegant Ionic structure located at
the entrance to the citadel, the whole building had to be taken down
piece by piece in 2000.
Repairs have also be done to the Acropolis fortification walls
which date back to Mycenaean times, in the 13th century BC.
For years tourists visiting the ancient rock have been greeted by
scaffolding, which many complain is an eyesore. While officials said
they want to have as little scaffolding up as possible, it will never
completely disappear from the sight.
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