That’s how Frank Partride describes the New Acropolis Museum in the Independent:
At the museum entrance, a signboard describes the Parthenon Gallery as a “dress rehearsal for a permanent exhibition of the entire frieze”. For the Greeks, it’s no longer a matter of if the marbles are returned, but when. Bernard Tschumi, the museum’s Swiss-born architect, signed off his €130m creation with the words: “I’m convinced the marbles will come back. Their return will make sense straight away.”Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, the academic who has overseen the six-year project, speaks with the quiet certainty of someone who knows his big moment is at hand, after a very Athenian sequence of delays that have postponed the opening by nearly a year. Building anything in Athens is bound to turn up a treasure or two in the subsoil, and as the holes were being sunk to house the museum’s load-bearing piles, a 5,000-year-old urban settlement was discovered, which had to be carefully excavated and incorporated into the design. They’ve achieved this triumphantly, turning part of the ground floor into a glass walkway directly above the ruins, giving the impression that the museum is suspended in mid-air.
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