Lego Oedipus, Lego Lord Elgin and Lego Sigmund Freud are in Greece, part of an extraordinary gift from the University of Sydney’s Nicholson Museum to the Acropolis Museum in Athens.

The figures are a small part of a Lego Acropolis built by Ryan McNaught, the only Lego-certified professional in the southern hemisphere.

Faithfully recreated in gleaming white bricks, the model features the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena Nike, the smaller Erechtheion temple and the site’s monumental gateway, the Propylaea.

It also contains hilarious modern and ancient scenes using Lego mini-figures. In the small Odeon, Theseus winds his way through a labyrinth to face the Minotaur. In the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, Elton John gives a concert to modern-day tourists. Lord Elgin and his crew make off with the Parthenon marbles, while Freud, who visited the Acropolis in 1904, looks on.

Michael Turner, senior curator at the Nicholson Museum, says the Acropolis Museum emailed him “out of the blue” asking if it could borrow the model to attract younger visitors.

“This could only happen in my wildest dreams,” Turner says. “After a largely sleepless night, I got back to the museum and said no, they couldn’t borrow it … we’d give it to them.”

“The British Museum refuses to return the Parthenon Marbles; the Nicholson Museum and University of Sydney donates a whole Acropolis!” Turner joked.