Athens: Acropolis Museum

By the time we reached Athens, we were tired out.  Navigating within a big city, when the signs are in a different alphabet can be a little challenging.  Sylvia came down with a fever our first night in Athens, but sprung back into action the following day...and then Lillian had the fever for a day.

While Pierre heroically returned the rental car to the airport, the girls and I explored the  The Acropolis Museum. 

No Pictures are allowed inside.

 We picked up a family backpack and were on our way.

The museum, which is the modern building below the Acropolis (top right of the photo) It opened in 2009.   The top of the old museum can be seen to the left of the Parthenon.

The building "floats" over a current archaeological dig.  There are a lot of glass floors throughout the building.  In some places on the top floor of the museum, you can look down  to the dig several floors below! 

 Who is this mature girl?  We had a memory game with different statues of Athena that we played while we waited for our drinks.  The café overlooks the Parthenon.

 Our backpack contained a map to various statues of Athena.  We also had cards that told us some facts and some history about each Athena.  The girls liked the statue that was painted to look like it looked like when it was new.  I imagine everything white like it is now, but almost everything was painted with bright colors.  We also liked the display that showed the different colors of paint used and what mineral, etc. the paint came from.

The top floor houses the Parthenon Gallery which contains the relief sculptures of the Parthenon frieze.  There is also an excellent movie showing what the Parthenon would have looked like when it was new.  The frieze is displayed with room for the missing pieces.  

The majority of the frieze is in the British Museum.  We saw the pieces at the British Museum last March.

The Parthenon Marbles, also known as the Elgin Marbles is a collection of classical Greek marble sculptures (mostly by Phidias and his assistants), inscriptions and architectural members that originally were part of the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin obtained a controversial permit from the Ottoman authorities to remove pieces from the Parthenon while serving as the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803.

The Greeks would like the British to return the rest of the frieze.