Ancient Greek culture

Students and teachers rallied in central Athens on Thursday to protest against the establishment of private universities in Greece.

Despite the rain, protesters gathered at Propylaia and are expected to mark towards the Parliament. 

The monuments on the Acropolis of Athens and any work carried out on the Sacred Rock always tend to draw attention. We saw this happening again with the interventions to facilitate wheelchair access, which sparked controversy among experts concerning the impact of this work.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday repeated calls for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures to Athens from the British Museum, months after a diplomatic spat with Britain over the 2,500-year-old pieces.

Greece will insist on the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis reiterated in a videotaped statement at the opening of the exhibition "Cycladic art: The Leonard N. Stern collection on loan from the Hellenic Republic" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Mitsotakis did not attend the event as he has been infected by H1N1.

Archaeological site guards walked off the job for four hours until noon on Tuesday to express their opposition to government plans to outsource ticketing for the Acropolis.

The streets and hills of Athens are ribbed with marble steps, ancient and modern, rising and dropping in the dawns and dusks of time. One recent addition to these monumental pathways is the set of paved stairs facing the performance area at the new Acropolis Museum that sits convivially below the Parthenon.

Greece will offer visitors the opportunity to have a private, two-hour guided tour of the famous Acropolis Hill - with nobody else around - for 5,000 euros, following a unanimous decision by the country's top advisory body on the protection of antiquities, the Central Archaeological Council (KAS), on Wednesday.

Acropolis guards on a 24-hour warning strike on Tuesday to protest the Culture Ministry's decision to privatize ticket issuance and entry control services through a bidding process. The protesters deemed it a "transfer of public funds to private entities." 

Police remanded 47 people for questioning on Wednesday during pre-emptive searches in downtown Athens, amid concerns of violence breaking out at marches commemorating 15 years since the police shooting of teen Alexis Grigoropoulos.

"These were legally acquired at the time." Of all the sound bites heard during this week's furor on the Parthenon Sculptures, that one (attributed to a spokesman for Rishi Sunak) is among the most depressing.

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