Greece renews demand for Britain to release Parthenon sculptures

Athens: Gods, heroes and long-dead mortals stepped off their plinths into the evening sky of Athens during the lavish launch of the new Acropolis Museum, a decades-old dream that Greece hopes will also help reclaim a cherished part of its heritage from Britain.

The digital animated display of artefacts on the museum walls on Saturday ended years of delays and wrangling over the ultramodern building, set among apartment blocks and elegant neoclassical houses at the foot of the Acropolis hill.

The nearly 3 million euros (Dh15.34 million) opening ceremony was attended by some 400 guests, including European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, Unesco Director-General Koichiro Matsuura, and foreign heads of state and government.

Conspicuously, there were no government officials from Britain, which has repeatedly refused to repatriate dozens of 2,500-year-old sculptures from the Parthenon temple that are held in the British Museum.

President Karolos Papoulias said Greeks think of the Acropolis monuments as their "identity and pride," and renewed the demand for the missing marble works, displayed in London for the past 200 years.

"The whole world can now see the most important sculptures from the Parthenon together," Papoulias said. "Some are missing. It is time to heal the wounds on the monument by returning the marbles that belong to it."

Culture Minister Antonis Samaras said the sculptures "will inevitably return," but ruled out Greece acknowledging the British Museum's legal title to the works - as requested by officials in London as a precondition for any loan.

To drive the point home, Samaras fitted a small marble head of a goddess from another Greek museum into its original position among the Parthenon sculptures on display.

"May we join up more original pieces in the future, to reunite the Parthenon," he said.

Large crowds watched the heavily policed opening ceremony from nearby cafes, and families gathered on overlooking balconies.

The 130 million euro museum provides an airy setting for some of the best surviving works of classical sculpture that once adorned the Acropolis.