Parthenon piece returns to Greece
ATHENS: A marble fragment of the Parthenon temple has been returned to Athens from a museum in Sicily, a move officials hope will advance efforts to have the British Museum send back ancient sculptures from Greece’s most renowned ancient landmark.
Athens’ Acropolis Museum presented on Monday the “Fagan fragment”, a 35-by-31-centimetre marble fragment showing the foot of the seated ancient Greek goddess Artemis brought home from the Antonio Salinas Archaeological Museum in Palermo.
“It is marvellous that Sicilian and Italian friends thought to bring it back where it was born,” Acropolis Museum Director Nikolaos Stampolidis said of the fragment, once part of the temple’s eastern frieze.
It is to be placed in the Parthenon Gallery — a glass-walled chamber with a view of the Parthenon that displays sculptures of the temple’s 160-metrelong frieze in the same position as they were on the original monument, with plaster copies replacing pieces that are now mainly in the British Museum.
“We hope that this first step taken by Sicily can encourage a similar decision in other countries,” said Antonio Salinas Museum Director Caterina Greco.
Part of Sicily’s cultural heritage agreement, which provides for transfers and exchanges of artefacts between museums, the Parthenon fragment will be loaned to Athens for four years with a renewal option for another four, but talks are underway for the piece to remain permanently. The “Fagan fragment” is a part of a larger sculpture in the Acropolis Museum that is mostly a plaster copy, whose original pieces are in the British Museum.
The fragment was once part of the collection of the 19th-century British consul-general to Sicily, Robert Fagan, a diplomat and archaeologist, before it was purchased by the Royal University of Palermo in 1820 from his widow after his death. It is not clear how Fagan first acquired it.
The “Fagan fragment” is the first piece of the Parthenon sculptures to return to Greece from a foreign museum.
Athens has campaigned to have the “Elgin Marbles”, as they are often known — 75 metres of Parthenon frieze, 15 metopes and 17 sculptures — returned from the British Museum since they were removed by British diplomat Lord Elgin in the early 19th century.