Athens, Greece (CNN) — Protesters clashed with police in central Athens Wednesday as thousands of transport workers went on strike against severe austerity measures the government says are needed to tackle the country’s crippling budget deficit.

CNN’s Jim Boulden said bottles and flares were thrown and small fires started in the vicinity of Athens’ Constitutional Square outside the Greek parliament building. Police responded with tear gas and cordoned off roads around the parliament.

Earlier around 35,000 people were estimated to have taken part in a march, according to unions. Boulden said violence had been limited to a small faction separate from the main protest and lasted about an hour.

All flights to and from Greece have been cancelled and nationwide disruption is forecast on bus and rail networks with trade unions rallying widespread support for the 24-hour action by public and private sector workers.

Schools, hospitals, government offices, banks and media outlets were all expected to be affected with unions representing 2.5 million workers joining the action. Large protests were also scheduled to converge in Athens’ Constitutional Square outside the parliament building.

The Greek strikes are the latest in a series of industrial disputes to erupt across Europe as the continent’s business and public sectors struggle to balance economic reform with demands from their workforces.

They are also the latest to affect Greece, which has endured several stoppages since the government announced it was hiking taxes, tightening tax controls, raising the retirement age by two years and imposing public sector pay cuts.

Prime Minister George Papandreou’s government imposed the measures after the previously masked results of years of unrestrained spending, cheap lending and failure to implement financial reforms were exposed late last year.

It is now struggling to bring debts of €300 billion ($413.6 billion) and a deficit of 12.7 percent of gross domestic product under control, restore investor confidence and comply to eurozone regulations.

Polls show that the majority of Greeks actually support the popular government plans to cut the safety net for public sector workers and attempts to get the rich to pay more taxes.

The government says Greece must modernize its tax structure as the country suffers from tax avoidance and other structural impediments to job growth. But younger workers say they already pay high taxes, have little job security and make less money than older generations.

Greece’s financial troubles have caused concerns across the EU. Analysts say there are fears the problems could spread to weaker members of the economic bloc such as Portugal, the Republic of Ireland and Spain.

The EU has pledged support for Greece, but offered no concrete assistance. It has given Athens until March 16 to show it is taking necessary measures.

Wednesday’s strikes come during a week of assessments by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

BY SUZANNE MUCHNIC – LOS ANGELES TIMES
ATHENS — The new Acropolis Museum is proof, at last, that Greece has a safe place to display some hotly contested artworks – the marble sculptures removed from the Parthenon in the 19th century and long housed at the British Museum in London.

For Athenians who live and work near the Acropolis, the looming modern structure at the southeastern base of the hill is a mixed blessing. The $200 million, 226,000-square-foot museum has transformed the area of Makrygianni, boosting property values while dwarfing other buildings in the neighborhood.

Dimitrios Pandermalis, a classical archaeologist who presided over the building’s construction and is now president of the museum, is acutely aware of all this. But for him, the gleaming edifice is a dream come true, or at least partly so.

With 150,000 square feet of exhibition space, 10 times that of its predecessor, the museum presents layer upon layer of Acropolis history, from about 1000 B.C. to A.D. 700. Opened in June, it welcomed its millionth visitor in late October and continues to pack in about 10,000 people a day.

“What we miss in many museums with pieces from different origins is that we don’t know precisely where many of them came from,” Pandermalis says. “It’s not enough to say that something is from Greece. We need to know if it’s from northern or southern Greece or from Athens and which side of Athens. Here, all the exhibits are related to the Acropolis. Inscriptions on the bases of the statues help us connect the pieces to great personalities of politics and leading artists of the time.”

War, earthquakes, the ravages of time, weather and pollution have seriously damaged the historic structures on the Acropolis, including the Parthenon. Today, cranes and scaffolding are part of the landscape in an ongoing effort to stabilize and restore crumbling buildings.

The new showcase, designed by Bernard Tschumi Architects of New York and Paris, stands on concrete pylons above an excavation of an urban settlement dating from archaic to early Christian Athens. Discovered during construction, the site is expected to open to the public this year. For now, parts of it are visible in open pits and see-through panels in walkways. Inside the building, visitors see the excavation through the glass floor of a central ramp as they ascend to a vast, airy gallery of sculpture from the seventh to the early fifth century B.C.

Depictions of violent struggles among animals, gods and demons in the Archaic Gallery once adorned triangular pediments under temple roofs. Many free-standing objects mingling with a forest of columns were made as votive offerings, dedicated to the gods as tokens of piety, thanks for blessings or emblems of achievement and status.

Towering marble statues of young women bearing gifts were donated to a temple by wealthy citizens.

On the top floor is the Parthenon Gallery, a glass-encased rectangular space that has been shifted 23 degrees from the lower part of the building to align it with the ancient temple. Visitors have a direct view of the Parthenon while perusing its decorative scheme of carved marble reconstructed in the gallery. The sculptures are attributed to Phidias, who collaborated with his pupils Agorakritos, Alkamenes and other artists.

The pediments depict the birth of Athena and her victory over Poseidon.

A bas-relief frieze that wrapped around the building portrays a 12-day festival populated by 360 figures and more than 250 animals. Ninety-two high relief panels, called metopes, illustrate battle scenes. About half the components are original marbles that have remained in Greece. Some pieces were lost in a 1687 explosion. The rest are plaster casts, mostly of pieces at the British Museum.

Debate over marbles

The Parthenon Gallery has heated up the long-simmering debate about the rightful home of the marbles taken to London by a Scottish diplomat known as Lord Elgin during a period of Ottoman Turkish rule and purchased by the British government in 1816 for 35,000 pounds sterling (more than $3 million today).

“The new museum explains the problem to the public,” Pandermalis says. “We do not demand the return of every antiquity to the country of origin. For this one monument that is so important for the cultural history of the world, we have to find the solution to reunify all the original fragments. When you have the head of a statue and the body is 4,000 kilometers away, it’s a problem.”

The British show no sign of relinquishing the marbles in their possession.

But instead of laboring the point, Pandermalis shares “special views” at the museum, such as a quiet spot overlooking the Archaic Gallery, where visitors come face to face with an astonishing array of statues made thousands of years ago, some with traces of bright pigment.

Roger Boyes, Athens

Greece has been cut off from the outside world for 24 hours as angry public sector workers brought the country’s airports, ferry terminals and overland border crossings to a standstill.

Revolutionary songs blared through loudspeakers in central Athens and tens of thousands of strikers chanted “Traitors! Traitors!” in front of the Greek parliament as they protested against government austerity measures designed to cut the country’s budget deficit of 12.7 per cent to 2.7 per cent in three short years.

The moves, which will entail a hiring freeze in the public sector, a 10 per cent cut in supplementary pay and an increase in the retirement age are supposed to send a signal to the rest of the eurozone that Greece is intent on getting its house in order.

But the leftist unions are determined to make a stand against the Socialist government of George Papandreou.

“I always considered myself a socialist, ” said Petros Georgakis, an IT expert for a government ministry who was chanting anti-government slogans close to Athens university, “now I feel disgust. The minimum wage is being eroded and we will be driven into poverty as a society to please the plutocrats and the people in Brussels.”

The public sector workers union ADEDY holds sway over some half a million workers and it is determined on Wednesday to show its power.

All flights were cancelled–because air traffic controllers refused to work–and tens of thousands of tourists were stranded. Some gathered in little distressed knots outside the empty, echoing terminal of Athens airport.

The port of Piraeus is closed blocking all contact between the Greek mainland and the outlying islands. Buses stayed in their depots. Some bank and shop workers shared cars into the centre of the capital and the large number of young women in trainers indicated that they had walked to work. Schools are closed all day. Hospitals are working only on an emergency basis.

But for the most part the country ground to a standstill. The tourist infrastructure, one of Greece’s main sources of income, collapsed. Museums were shut, the ticket collectors to sights such as the Parthenon simply locked the gates and disappeared.

“They had promised the rich would pay but instead they take the money from the poor,” said Ilias Iliopoulos, head of the ADEDY union. “This is what we are opposing, not the attempt to deal with the crisis.” In fact, the government is trying to make the cuts appear to be socially balanced: there will be tax investigations into high earning but low tax paying doctors, dentists and lawyers. Under a plan announced on Tuesday, property owners with houses worth more than €800,000 will pay 1 per cent of the house’s value in tax every year.

The only public servants visibly on the job, in Athens at least, were riot policemen. They were tucked away in the side streets, guarding ministries and monitoring a part of the capital where riots first erupted in December 2008.

The fear is that the sedate, tightly organised union demonstrations would spread to the disaffected young. Photographs of torched cars or stone throwing protestors would send exactly the wrong signal to EU leaders as they meet on Thursday to discuss how Greece can be helped through its crisis.

After inevitable delays — including the discovery of an ancient Athenian city under the building site — The New Acropolis Museum is open for business, packing in visitors to the historic but semi-rundown neighborhood of Makrygianni in Athens. The thoughtful design by former Columbia architecture dean Bernard Tschumi and team positions the 226,000 square foot museum over the footprint of the long-ruined city; the exhibition space — ten times larger than that of the previous edifice — provides what could someday be a permanent home for the hotly contested Elgin Marbles and other looted artifacts. Hellenic architecture porn after the jump.

Bernard Tschumi Architects won the bid in 2001 in a design competition chaired by Santiago Calatrava; their winning plan “created a deliberately non-monumental structure whose simple and precise design invokes the mathematical and conceptual clarity of ancient Greek architecture” while establishing a dialogue between the museum’s exhibition spaces and the existing Acropolis buildings.

More than 100 concrete pillars support the building over the remains of an ancient Athenian city, discovered during pre-construction.

The entrance of the museum correlates to the pedestrian walkway of Dionysiou Areopagitou. Both the interior and exterior spaces of the Acropolis Museum highlight archaeological excavations below.

Gallery of the Acropolis Slopes. The circular holes promote function as much as form, providing soundproofing for the space.

Exterior detail: “Reflections of the Attica sky are visible on the glass surface of the Parthenon Gallery.” The gallery parallels the orientation of the ancient temple on the rock.

Reporting from Athens – For advocates of the repatriation of marble sculptures removed from the Parthenon in the early 19th century and long housed at the British Museum in London, the new Acropolis Museum is proof — at last — that Greece has a safe place to display the hotly contested artworks.

For Athenians who live and work near the Acropolis, the looming modern structure at the southeastern base of the hill is a mixed blessing. The $200-million, 226,000-square-foot museum has transformed the area of Makrygianni, boosting property values while dwarfing other buildings in the neighborhood.

Dimitrios Pandermalis, a classical archaeologist who presided over the building’s construction and is now president of the museum, is acutely aware of all this. But for him, the gleaming edifice is a dream come true or at least partly so.

With 150,000 square feet of exhibition space, 10 times that of its predecessor, the museum presents layer upon layer of Acropolis history, from about 1000 BC to AD 700. Opened in June, it welcomed its millionth visitor in late October and continues to pack in about 10,000 people a day.

“What we miss in many museums with pieces from different origins is that we don’t know precisely where many of them came from,” Pandermalis says. “It’s not enough to say that something is from Greece. We need to know if it’s from northern or southern Greece or from Athens and which side of Athens. Here, all the exhibits are related to the Acropolis. Inscriptions on the bases of the statues help us connect the pieces to great personalities of politics and leading artists of the time.”

A soft-spoken, grandfatherly scholar, Pandermalis wears an apricot-colored tie sprinkled with whimsical giraffes and elephants. But he works in an austere, high-ceilinged room on the second floor of a museum-adjacent neoclassical building, a former military hospital that houses Ministry of Culture offices. On his desk, a replica head of a classical sculpture jauntily crowned by a white hard hat speaks of construction challenges.

“I’ve had a turbulent life,” says Pandermalis, part of the Greek Parliament in 2000, when he agreed to head the building commission. Professor emeritus of classical archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, he has ended a long teaching career but still directs the university’s archaeological excavation at the foot of Mt. Olympus.

“The idea of a new Acropolis Museum started more than 30 years ago,” he says. “The first architectural competition was held in 1976. I got involved in 2000 and started the fourth competition. A major problem was the site. Should it be around the Acropolis or at a distance from it or hidden underground? Another difficulty is that the site around the Acropolis is full of antiquities.

“It wasn’t easy to hope for a new museum,” he says. “But it was really necessary. The old museum on the hill was not appropriate for the finds. We have masterpieces, very precious pieces, and we did not have space to present them.”

War, earthquakes and ravages of time, weather and pollution have seriously damaged the historic structures on the Acropolis, including the Parthenon. Today, cranes and scaffolding are part of the landscape in an ongoing effort to stabilize and restore crumblings buildings..

Earlier layers

The new showcase, designed by Bernard Tschumi Architects of New York and Paris, stands on concrete pylons above an excavation of an urban settlement dating from archaic to early Christian Athens. Discovered during construction, the site is expected to open to the public this year. For now, parts of it are visible in open pits and see-through panels in walkways. Inside the building, visitors see the excavation through the glass floor of a central ramp as they ascend to a vast, airy gallery of sculpture from the 7th to the early 5th century BC.

Depictions of violent struggles among animals, gods and demons in the Archaic Gallery once adorned triangular pediments under temple roofs. Many free-standing objects mingling with a forest of columns were made as votive offerings, dedicated to the gods as tokens of piety, thanks for blessings or emblems of achievement and status. Towering marble statues of young women bearing gifts were donated to a temple by wealthy citizens.

On the top floor is the Parthenon Gallery, a jaw-dropping, glass-encased rectangular space that has been shifted 23 degrees from the lower part of the building to align it with the ancient temple. Visitors have a direct view of the Parthenon itself while perusing its decorative scheme of carved marble reconstructed in the gallery. The sculptures are attributed to Phidias, who collaborated with his pupils Agorakritos, Alkamenes and other artists.

The pediments depict the birth of Athena and her victory over Poseidon. A bas-relief frieze that wrapped around the building portrays a 12-day festival populated by 360 figures and more than 250 animals. Ninety-two high relief panels, called metopes, illustrate battle scenes. About half the components are original marbles that have remained in Greece. Some pieces were lost in a 1687 explosion. The rest are plaster casts, mostly of pieces at the British Museum.

“I like very much that the physical environment is involved in the presentation of the exhibits,” Pandermalis says. “People need to be conscious of cultural and historical layers to arrive at their sources. We have the sources. We are very proud of that.”

Debate on marbles

But it’s no accident that the Parthenon Gallery has heated up the long-simmering debate about the rightful home of the marbles taken to London by a Scottish diplomat known as Lord Elgin during a period of Ottoman Turkish rule and purchased by the British government in 1816 for 35,000 pounds sterling (more than $3 million today).

“The new museum explains the problem to the public,” Pandermalis says. “It’s a new base for the discussion. A full interpretation of the whole architecture is necessary to get an idea about the size, richness and quality of the sculpture. It was the glory of Athens in the classical period.

“We do not demand the return of every antiquity to the country of origin. For this one monument that is so important for the cultural history of the world, we have to find the solution to reunify all the original fragments. When you have the head of a statue and the body is 4,000 kilometers away, it’s a problem.”

The British show no sign of relinquishing the marbles in their possession. But instead of belaboring the point, Pandermalis shares “special views” at the museum, such as a quiet spot overlooking the Archaic Gallery, where visitors come face to face with an astonishing array of statues made thousands of years ago, some with traces of bright pigment. Another favorite place provides a vantage point above a group of female statues known as caryatids made to support a porch roof on the Erechtheion, a temple built in the early 5th century BC.

“Look at that, how people move,” he says. “There’s an overlay of space and movement, also of time. History becomes power, moving power.”

calendar@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

The application provides the possibility of immediate access to the frieze, both as a database for scholars and, as digital games for schools and their pupils. This virtual representation of the Parthenon Frieze presents, in an articulate and transparent way, in both Greek and English, a comprehensive overview of a masterpiece of significant archeological value. At the same time it is characterized by scientific documentation, becoming thus an essential tool for the archeologist/researcher, as well as for the teacher, who can use it as an educational implement.

*Click read more to see more about this new site.  But I want to add a note that the web site is VERY slow and difficult to manage – in fact it’s a user nightmare – designed in all FLASH which is completely unnecessary and distracting from the actual information the site could provide.  Give it a try at your own risk.*

The National Documentation Centre, always in the front line of developing Greek cultural content, has collaborated on this application, bringing in new Information Technologies for open access to knowledge. The designing of the application was developed in accordance with contemporary ways of presenting and displaying cultural subjects on the Internet, making use of new technologies and the new educational programmes that have been developed by YSMA and have to do with the description and deepening of knowledge about the Parthenon Frieze.

The application in its new form enhances and upgrades the first digital version that was presented in 2003 in CD-ROM form. Since that version entered the Web, on the EKT website, it has been consistently in first place out of 50,000 postings in the list of world-wide searches conducted through Google.

What is the Parthenon Frieze

The Parthenon frieze, which runs on a continuous line around the exterior wall of the inner chamber of the temple, is 1 meter high and 160 meters long. It represents the Panathenaic procession that was a central celebration in Athens during Classical times, dedicated to the goddess Athena. The frieze consists of 115 blocks where some 378 human figures and deities and more than 200 animals, mainly horses, are represented.

Groups of horses and chariots occupy most of the space on the frieze. The sacrificial procession follows next, with animals and groups of men and women carrying ceremonial vessels and offerings. The procession concludes with the offering of the peplos, the gift of the Athenian people to the cult statue of the Goddess, a xoanon (ancient wooden statue). To the left and right of the peplos scene sit the twelve gods of Mount Olympos.

From the entire frieze that survives today, 50 meters are in the Acropolis Museum, 80 meters in the British Museum, one block in the Louvre, whilst other fragments are scattered in the museums of Palermo, the Vatican, Würzburg, Vienna, Munich and Copenhagen.

The units of virtual Parthenon Frieze web site

The contents have been organised into three units, entitled “The Parthenon”, “Know the Frieze” and “Play with the Frieze”.

The unit “The Parthenon” includes a text and illustrations that show the architecture and sculptural decoration of the temple. The sculpture comprises the statue of Athena Parthenos, the pediments, the metopes and the frieze. The frieze is analysed under the following units: the Theme, the Panathenaia, Interpretive Theories, Designing and Construction, History, Conservation, Bibliography. The contents are presented through three-dimensional cards that include the relevant texts and accompanying pictures.

The unit “Know the Frieze” is based on a three-dimensional model of the Parthenon, on which the four sides are distinguished. The user has two possibilities in this unit. The first possibility is to know the frieze according to the side. If you choose the north side, for example, the three-dimensional model revolves and on the screen appear the preserved blocks of that side filled in by the drawings of Carrey. If you select a specific block from that side, it is enlarged and it moves into centre-screen. The user can see it from close-up and can read a text that describes the scene on the block in detail. With the navigation buttons the user can move to the next block.

The second possible choice of “Know the Frieze” unit is entitled “thematic tours”. Here the user can approach the frieze through its various themes: preparation, horsemen, chariots, sacrificial procession, gods/goddesses and the handing over of the peplos. Placing the pointer on the titles emphasises the corresponding areas of the three-dimensional model of the frieze. By selecting, for example, the unit “gods/goddesses”, the corresponding area of the East Frieze is enlarged on the screen and the tour begins. The relevant text appears at the top of the screen and depending on the content of each phrase, the corresponding areas of the frieze are highlighted.

Play with the Frieze

The third level of the application is entitled “Play with the Frieze” and it is intended for children. It begins with an introduction where the user, whatever his age, can understand very quickly what the frieze was, where it was, what it represented, and he can see a number of statistical facts as well as the games contained in the application. After this, a yellow box appears. This is the museum kit of the frieze: it appears, it opens and out come the games.

The games “Acquaintance with the Figures in the Procession”, “The Procession to the Altar”, and “Observing the Horses” are games of memory and they are designed to attract children to closer observation of the details of the frieze. In this same category of games, in which the children are asked to exercise their powers of observation, there are two puzzles entitled “The Hidden Chariot” and “A Gift for the Goddess Athena”. The children choose a representation and are asked to put together the corresponding puzzle.

The game entitled “Colouring a Block of the Frieze” is intended to enliven the relief scenes of the frieze and to help the children to imagine their colours. The next game is entitled “Be a Conservator”. In the game “I Compose the West Frieze”, the children try to find the correct position of the 16 blocks of the West Frieze that represent the preparation for the procession of horsemen in the Great Panathenaia. Likewise in the games entitled “Olympian Puzzles: find the gods/goddesses” and “Contests that Remained…on the Vases”, the children have to match text with picture.

The unit “Play with the Frieze” has also been enriched by an animation entitled “And Suddenly my Horse became Marble”. Here, one of the riders of the frieze has come “alive” and, galloping, tries to find his place in the procession. The moment he finds his place, he turns into marble.

While the museum kit has been used by a total of some 35,000 pupils and has been given to 120 institutions in Greece and 90 abroad, the new application provides the possibility of open access to virtually all who are interested.

The application was developed in the framework of the project “National Information System, Phase III – Open Access Electronic Repositories and Journals”. The project is being implemented by the National Documentation Centre and is co-funded by the European Union – European Regional Development Fund (80%) and by the Hellenic State (20%) through the Operational Programme Information Society (3rd CSF 2000-2006).

Links

Parthenon Frieze
http://www.parthenonfrieze.gr/

The Acropolis, a symbol of western civilization, will be the world’s oldest landmark to turn off the lights for Earth Hour and join the global movement against climate change.

At 8:30PM local time the Parthenon, the centrepiece of the Acropolis, will turn black and join an hundreds of millions people from around the globe to switch off the lights in the first global election on the future of our planet.

Located in the heart of Athens, the Parthenon was commissioned by Pericles in the middle of the 5th century BC, the height of Greek power. The result was a perfectly proportioned marble temple enclosed by 46 fluted Doric columns. This creation has long been judged the single most important building in the canon of western civilisation.

“These great sites remind us of a time when humankind made a great leap forward towards a brighter and better future,” said Earth Hour Executive Director, Andy Ridley.
“Earth Hour provides an opportunity to reconnect us to this sense of optimism and foresight as we stand at another critical juncture in human history, which is how we respond to climate change.”

Amazing Response

The Acropolis whose earliest artifacts date to the Middle Neolithic era, will be one of many Greek historical sites to switch off for Earth Hour.

“We are thrilled to see such an amazing response from Greek cities and citizens. As a part of a global community, Greece stands ready to sends its message on climate change, loud and clear.” said Demetres Karavellas CEO of WWF Greece.

This year’s Earth Hour has transformed into a public vote calling on world leaders and all people living on the planet to respect their environment and help tackle climate change.

For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote, whose result will be presented to leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.

This meeting will determine official government policies to take action against global warming, which will replace the Kyoto Protocol. It is the chance for the people of the world to make their voice heard.

The long-awaited museum where Greece hopes to one day display the Elgin Marbles alongside other ancient masterpieces from the Acropolis will be inaugurated this summer.

Culture Minister Antonis Samaras said Friday the opening ceremony will be held on June 20. Initially, Greece had planned to open the New Acropolis Museum ahead of the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Crouching at the foot of the Acropolis, the new glass and concrete museum is the centerpiece of Greece’s campaign for the return of the Elgin — or Parthenon — Marbles from the British Museum in London.

The British Museum has repeatedly refused to relinquish the 2,500-year-old sculptures, which formed part of the Parthenon Temple’s decoration until Scottish diplomat Lord Elgin removed them to Britain 200 years ago. At the time, Greece was still an unwilling part of the Ottoman Empire.

Website : The New Acropolis Museum

Website : Bernard Tschumi Architects

Posted Sun Apr 13, 2008 7:13pm AEST

A senior Greek archaeologist has warned that the last original sculptures still adorning the Parthenon, Athens’ iconic ancient temple, face a major pollution threat and must be removed to a museum.

“There are still 17 original metopes [sculpted plaques] which must be protected because they can no longer endure atmospheric conditions,” Acropolis site supervisor Alexandros Mantis said on Friday.

Mr Mantis has proposed that the endangered sculptures be replaced by replicas and kept safe in a new museum located below the Acropolis that is scheduled to open in September.

He singled out 14 plaques on the Parthenon’s western facade which are in a “pitiful” condition, plus two more on the northern side.

One of them is the so-called “Annunciation” plaque featuring two goddesses, which was spared by early Christians when the temple was turned into a church around 600 AD.

Athens’ most recognisable landmark and part of the ancient Acropolis citadel overlooking the city, the Parthenon dates back to the golden age of Athenian democracy which began in the fifth century BC

Few sculptures dating from the Acropolis’ creation are still on-site, having been gradually removed by Greek archaeologists in the last 30 years during restoration works.

The famous Caryatids, statues of young women that acted as pillars to the Erechtheion temple, were themselves removed in 1979.

The issue was discussed last week by the Greek archaeological council (KAS), the influential 34-member state body that advises the culture ministry on heritage issues.

But the council is frequently split and this case was no exception.

“Mr Mantis has stated his position but the archaeological council has not ruled on the issue,” Maria Ioannidou, the archaeologist heading the Acropolis restoration project (YSMA), said.

“A relevant study must be carried out and an international conference must be held on the issue to reach a decision.”

The culture ministry’s head of ancient monument restoration, Dimosthenis Giraud, also advised caution.

“A detailed study of the issue is necessary,” he said.

Criticisms

Sceptics say that removing the Parthenon’s last original sculptures would strike a jarring note with hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit the monument every year.

There is also debate over how the move will affect Greece’s case with the British Museum for the return of the Parthenon Marbles, the priceless friezes removed in the early 19th century by Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire which ruled Greece at the time.

The British have long accused Greek authorities of taking poor care of the vulnerable monument that was exposed to decades of air pollution.

Mr Mantis insists that protecting the sculptures will strengthen Greece’s case to have the Parthenon Marbles repatriated from London.

“We must protect our heritage at all costs,” he said.

A total of 92 metopes once adorned the Parthenon’s outer Doric frieze, the oldest sculptures on the temple dedicated to Athens’ patron goddess Athena.

Depicting scenes of battle between gods and giants, men facing centaurs and Amazons, and the Trojan War, most of them are now nearly unrecognisable.

In addition to the changes wrought on the temple when it was turned into a church, it was badly damaged during a Venetian siege in 1687 when a cannon ball exploded in the Turkish powder magazine stored inside the Parthenon.

- AFP