The dream of "bring them back"

Melina Mercouri (1920-1994)

Many of you may know Melina Mercouri. Melina was a great Greek actress, singer and politician. Andreas Papandreou in 1981 anointed her Minister of Culture, a position that she held for 8 years. She had a dream. Today is completed the 17^th year after her death. Her dream hasn’t yet fulfilled.

I hope that all of you know the Parthenon located in the Athens’ Acropolis. It’s a great historic monument, which millions of tourists from all over the world visit every year. It was built with marble in the middle of the 5th century BC. This construction is so huge that is very difficult to understand how it’s built having in mind the restricted technology that people had 2500 years ago.

Around 1800, Greece was under the Ottomans possession. Ottomans let Elgin, a British Lord, to move almost the half of these marbles to Britain. Since then the monument of Parthenon is expecting the return of these marbles. Melina fought to bring them back however she didn’t manage to do that. Many people after her had the same dream but it is still a dream for them.

Now the marbles are located in the British Museum, in London.  I always had in mind that it is not so bad that the marbles are hosted in Great Britain. It is a very good advertisement of my country in such a big museum. Why do we want the back? I visited this museum 2 years ago. I left the hall where they are hosted in almost five minutes. I left because I was bored. I saw some hundreds of well sculptured marbles in a cold room. Then I realized why Greeks want them back.

These marbles are losing their importance, their merit away from the building of Parthenon. People can’t understand what they animate because their animation is strongly connected with the rest of the building. I was never a big fan of the “Bring them back” movement. But, I think that Melina’s dream should be fulfilled as soon as possible. The marbles don't belong to Greeks, to British, to Ottomans. They belong to Parthenon and to the citizens of this world.    

Parthenon