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The British and Greek governments have entered a deepening row over the Elgin Marbles, after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak cancelled a meeting with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis over Britain’s holding of the ancient sculptures.
Tom Anstey | Planet Attractions | 29 Nov 2023
The British and Greek governments have entered a deepening row over the Elgin Marbles, after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak cancelled a meeting with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis over Britain’s holding of the ancient sculptures.
Also known as the Parthenon Sculptures, Sunak cancelled a meeting with Mitsotakis, after the Greek Prime Minister told the BBC that having some of the treasures in London and others in Athens was "like cutting the Mona Lisa in half".
The ancient sculptures, which date back to 500 B.C., originally formed part of the Parthenon in Athens but were removed by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, in the early 19th century, before being sold to the British government in 1816.
While Elgin claimed to have obtained an official decree from the ruling government to remove the artefacts, no such decree has ever been found, despite the wealth of surviving documents from the same period.
Since 1817 the sculptures have been housed inside the British Museum in London.
Both Greece and the UK have long-standing positions on the contested sculptures, but diplomatic talks were expected to focus on other topics.
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