The chairman of the British Museum in London has said he is open to a deal with Athens to share the Parthenon Marbles from the Acropolis of Athens, at the heart of a long-running feud between the UK and Greece.
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Since the beginning of the 20th century, Greece has officially requested the restitution, without success, of a 75-meter frieze detached from the Parthenon as well as one of the famous caryatids from the Erechtheion, a small ancient temple also on the rock of the Acropolis. both masterpieces of the British Museum.
Read alsoThe Parthenon marbles: an eternal quarrel in the process of being resolved?
London claims the sculptures were
“legally acquired”
in 1802 by British diplomat Lord Elgin who sold them to the British Museum.
But Greece maintains that they were the object of
"looting"
while the country was under Ottoman occupation.
"I think an agreement is possible to tell (their) story in both Athens and London if we approach this situation without preconditions or too many red lines
," George Osborne said on LBC radio on Tuesday evening.
Asked if an agreement could be reached to see the marbles exhibited for a time in Greece and then return to London, he felt that
“this type of arrangement”
would be possible,
“something allowing them to be seen in all their splendor in Athens and to see them with examples of other civilizations in London”
.
British public opinion is increasingly in favor of repatriation: 59% of respondents believe that the marbles taken away by Lord Elgin belong to Greece, according to the latest survey by the English institute Yougov, compared to 37% in 2014.
The influential British daily
The Times
, which has always been a strong supporter of the British Museum, spoke out in January in favor of a return.
More generally, pressure is mounting on European cultural institutions to return objects looted during the colonial era.
Last year, the University of Cambridge officially handed over to Nigeria a bronze rooster sculpture looted a century ago, a first in the UK.
The British Museum, which has the largest collection of bronzes in the world, refuses for the moment to follow this path.