In a special event to celebrate the Acropolis Museum’s10th anniversary on Thursday evening, Greek President Prokopios Pavlopoulos took the opportunity to bring the spotlight to the continued struggled for the repatriation of the Parthenon Marbles from Britain.
In an impassioned speech, the President declared that the return of the sculptures is “legally and institutionally imperative in the name of World Cultural Heritage,” ANA reports.
READ MORE: Is the ‘displacement’ of the Parthenon Marbles really a ‘creative act’?
The event was a fitting choice, given that if the sculptures are rightfully returned to Greece that they would be housed at the Acropolis Museum – a museum, which Pavlopoulos said was “a jewel of our culture and also of European and western civilisation in general”.
He went on to add that the international community “knows only too well that the hosting of the Parthenon Sculptures was a key prospect when the museum was being built”.
READ: OPINION The Acropolis Museum and the return of the Parthenon Sculptures: Back to the future