After all the controversy, lawsuits, and delays in building the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, it will no doubt seem churlish to point out that the $180 million museum, designed by Bernard Tschumi Architects, is not the firm’s most spectacular work. It lacks the lyrical grace of the stainless-steel-and-concrete Zenith concert hall in Rouen or the finesse of the shimmering, perforated-steel Vacheron Constantin headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, to name two. The dour mien of the New Acropolis Museum, with its sharp angles, black-fritted glass (except for a small section of the south wall), and less-than-perfect concrete work evokes High Modernist commercial American buildings of the 1970s.
That said, the interior of the museum provides a stunning setting for the Parthenon marbles displayed on its top floor. Here, museumgoers first encounter staggering views of the ancient, 5th-century B.C. temple through an expansive, 276-foot-long glazed wall facing north. Indeed, the elegant design of many of the museum interiors, and especially the Parthenon Gallery, makes a convincing case for the Elgin Marbles—removed by Lord Elgin between 1801 and 1810, when he was an ambassador from Great Britain to the Ottoman Empire—to be returned by the British Museum to Greece, and joined with the surviving originals. Increasingly over the years, Greece has argued vociferously for the return of the marbles to Athens: Since 1975, the government has planned to replace its smaller, 19th-century museum tucked into a corner of the Acropolis with a much larger structure that could adequately house the priceless treasures. It took four competitions to arrive at the final scheme, located in the historic, residential Makriyianni district. (The third, won in 1989 by Italian architects Manfredi Nicoletti and Lucio Passarelli, was aborted after archaeological remains from the 6th-century B.C. to the 5th-century A.D. were found on the 5.68-acre site.)
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