New Acropolis Museum by 2004
The foundations of the new Acropolis Museum will begin to be laid by early next month and the building will be completed before the Athens Olympics, Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos said yesterday. Denying reports that construction had been delayed, he said during a news conference, «We say with certainty that construction of the Acropolis Museum will be completed before the 2004 Olympics.» Venizelos rejected criticism that the museum would damage antiquities at the Makriyianni site facing the Acropolis. He argued that the building would stand on «stilts,» like the roof over the Akrotiri antiquities on Santorini. Athens hopes the new museum will help its efforts to repatriate the Parthenon Marbles that Lord Elgin sold to the British Museum. Prof. Anthony Snodgrass, chairman of the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles, who was at the news conference, noted that public opinion in Britain was increasingly in favor of their return. He noted that the British Museum’s new director, Neil McGregor, who assumes his duties in August, had agreed to meet with him.
