“Paris, Copenhagen, Würzburg, Karlsruhe and especially London are the cities where the fragments of the Parthenon, stolen from Greece, are still groaning today,” the Italian writer points out. Andrea Marcologo in an article of hers published, on the occasion of the Paris Book Festival, in the French newspaper Liberation. A. Marcologo specifically refers to the recent decision of the Vatican to return three marble heads to Greece, but also more generally to Greece’s request for the return of the Parthenon Marbles.

He recalls Lord Byron’s “prophetic” poem, “The Curse of Athena” and notes that some countries have finally decided to react, such as Italy, which returned part of the eastern beast to the Acropolis Museum and which until 2022 was kept in the Archaeological Museum of Palermo, where he had arrived at the beginning of the 19th century, under unclear circumstances.

“THE Pope Francis declared, that he wants to correct an injustice of more than 200 years, a position that was welcomed by Lina Mendoni, the Greek Minister of Culture”, says the Italian author, emphasizing that where politics does not have – or does not want to have – the legal means (since the works of art of a state are inalienable and cannot in any case be transferred) there is religion’. He points out in this regard that the return of the three heads to Greece was made in the context of a donation from the Catholic Church to the Orthodox Church and not a return from state to state. The Pope offered the sculptures to Archbishop Hieronymus II, who in turn decided to donate them to the Acropolis Museum, he notes.

A. Marcologo also mentions that a metope and a fragment of it are still exhibited in the Louvre frieze of the Parthenonbrought back to France by Count Choiselle-Gouffier, ambassador to the Ottoman Sublime Porte during the Napoleonic Empire.

He then refers to the story of Lord Elgin and how he extracted the marbles, emphasizing that in fifteen years, the Parthenon, which had gone through 2,500 years of history, suffered and disintegrated like never before.

Calling it terrible to wait and even worse to stop waiting, he emphasizes that the Greeks hope for the restoration of the Marbles that the British seized from their independence in 1821 and adds: “I wonder if it is not a geographical curse, the fate of all of the South to be humbled by a Northerner, whoever he may be. The reasons why they oppose the return of the Marbles to Greece in the last two centuries, are exactly the same as those that are expressed today in the debate about the restoration of African works of art. We have done them a favor, the Greeks must thank us, such has long been the position of England and the West towards their reproaches, accompanied by a paternalistic astonishment at this absence of gratitude. Even today, England refuses to consider returning its antiquities to Hellas».

“After all, all of Europe, all of us, stole something from Greece: whether it was her ideas, from which we forged our Western roots, or the Parthenon Marbles, it doesn’t matter. Someday we will have to learn to pay our debt to Athena”, concludes Andrea Marcologo.