Government plans to build a 235-million-euro tourist theme park south of Athens featuring ancient Greek mythology were inspired by a much-maligned plan to erect a gigantic, tourist-drawing statue of Aphrodite on the western coast of Cyprus, according to the Cypriot scheme’s architect. “Greece is copying us now because it was only recently that they decided to create a mythological theme park after our project was announced,” London-based Xanthos Menelaou, a Cypriot, told Wednesday’s Cyprus Mail.

But he cited the theme park, to be built in Anavyssos on the southern coast of Attica, to defend his own plans for a 50-million-dollar, multistory Aphrodite complex near Paphos. “[The Greeks] know archaeological places don’t attract tourists,” he said. The Aphrodite project, adopted by the Cypriot Ministry of Tourism, has been dismissed by the Cyprus Chamber of Fine Arts as “base, barbaric, morbid, bizarre, provocative, flashy, grotesque, monstrous, out of proportion, over the top, tacky, cheap, pointless and offensive.” The Anavyssos park, backed by the Greek Development Ministry, will be operational by 2004.