Naxos to host ‘three new museums inside another’

A bowl full of lentils is the first thing that catches my eye among the tools and ancient ostracons on the worktable of antiquities conservator Marina Moustaka. I ask what they're doing there and she tells me that lentils are the best way to store the delicate relics and that this particular bowl will be used for a Cycladic idol from the Steinhardt collection, which is being painstakingly cleaned in the lab of the Ephorate of Cycladic Antiquities.

The statuette of a female figure with folded arms is one of six artifacts that returned to their proper home a few weeks ago after being seized from the American billionaire Michael Steinhardt in 2021. The archaeologists who received the relics from their interim stop at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens were both awed and immensely relieved that they would finally be able to claim their place in the new Museum of...