Yesterday, I was thrilled to turn on the computer and travel via live streaming video to Athens for the opening of the new Acropolis Museum.  What you see above covers only a bit of that day.

The biggest surprise for me was that the Greeks who have been down-playing their differences with the British Museum, firmly voiced pleas for the return of the Parthenon marbles in speech after speech. The President of the Hellenic Republic said, “It is time to heal the wounds of the monument by returning them where they belong,”  Greece’s Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis said in a speech. The museum can help bring “the reunification of the Parthenon marbles. Because the Parthenon marbles speak in their entirety. This is the way to show the integrity of everything they stand for.”

The museum director, as he led the tour, made no bones about pointing out what was real and what was stolen. “The head of this horse is in Athens and the body is in London.  The body of this horse is in Athens and the head is in London.”Pointing out the plaster copies of pieces of the Parthenon frieze that reside in London, he said, “We are dealing with history in a realistic matter.”
“It has been removed. It should not have happened, but unfortunately, it did happen.”  He expressed his gratitude to the museums like the Heidelburg and the Vatican who had returned pieces from their collections.

Here at A Traveler’s Library, we celebrated all week.

• Monday: The movie “My Life in Ruins”
• Wednesday: Greek Mythology in a book
• Thursday: Greek Mythology on Stage
• Friday: Travel to Athens with Links to articles about the New Acropolis Museum
• Saturday: Lord Byron speaks out about the Theft of the Parthenon Marbles

You can see earlier posts on Greece at the Articles by Country page.

Although we interrupted the schedule on Tuesday to pay tribute to the protesters in Iran with a look at Reading Lolita in Tehran, we spent five (now six) days in the same country. Do you like to see a whole week dedicated to one country, or would you prefer to mix things up? Please let me know so A Traveler’s Library will be what YOU want it to be.

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The Parthenon in Athens, Greece

Destination: Greece

Read: Childe Harold, Canto II, XI-XIII and XV By Lord Byron

If you are lucky, you’ll tune in to the Acropolis web page in time to hear the ceremony of opening today. (They have a video embedded in the web site, but don’t say what time. Presumably quite early U.S. time)

I want to close this week’s emphasis on Greece with part of a poem by the biggest Grecophile of all, George Gordon, Lord Byron, who left England to travel widely. His poem Childe Harold , starts with a preface that quotes Fougeret de Monbron, “The universe is a sort of book, whose first page one has read when one has seen only one’s own country.”  He lived for a time  in Greece and help them in their war of Independence against the Ottoman Turks. You will find a Lord Byron Hotel in the Plaka below the Parthenon, on a street that he probably traveled.  You will find roads and tavernas and everything you can imagine named for Lord Byron in Greece. The Greeks remember their heroes.

The British Museum supporters are horrified at the thought that people will see the return of the Parthenon marbles as some kind of acknowledgement that they are a national symbol.  That is why they pound away on their point that they are now exhibited in a museum that shows bits and pieces of many civilizations so that people can understand the whole. The Greek argument hinges on showing the carvings in situ–or as close to situ as possible, since modern air pollution makes exposure in the air impractical. These two antithetical points of view go beyond politics.

The awesome new museum in Athens, with its skewed top floor paralleling the Parthenon and its glass walls that allow people to look at the marbles and the original site all at once, make a moving argument for return that has nothing to do with nationalism.

Childe Harold by Byron

Canto XI

But who, of all the plunders of yon fane
On high, where Pallas linger’d, loth to flee
The latest relic of her ancient reign;
The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he?
Blush, Caledonia! such thy son could be!
England! I joy no child he was of thine:
Thy free-born men should spare what once was free;
Yet they could violate each saddening shrine,
And bear these altars o’er the long-reluctant brine. (Poem continues on next page)

Canto XII

But most the modern Pict’s ignoble boast,
To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared:
Cold as the crags upon his native coast,
His mind as barren and his heart as hard,
Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared,
Aught to displace Athena’s poor remains:
Her sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard,
Yet felt some portion of their mother’s pains,
And never knew, till then, the weight of Despot’s chains.

Canto XIII

What! shall it e’er be said by British tongue,
Albion was happy in Athena’s tears?
Though in thy name the slaves her bosom wrung,
Tell not the deed to blushing Europe’s ears;
The ocean queen, the free Britannia, bears
The last poor plunder from a bleeding land:
Yes, she, whose gen’rous aid her name endears,
Tore down those remnants with a harpy’s hand,
Which envious Eld forbore, and tyrants left to stand.

Canto XV

Cold is the heart, fair Greece, that looks on thee,
Nor feels as lovers o’er the dust they loved;
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behov’d
To guard those relics ne’er to be restored.
Curst be the hour when their isle they roved,
And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
And snatch’d thy shrinking Gods to northern climes abhorr’d!

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The Acropolis Museum beneath the Parthenon

Tomorrow, at long last, is the day. After a week of sneak-previews, the Acropolis Museum (having dropped the “new”, I believe) will open to the public–residents, tourists, everybody.  The new web site opened with much fanfare. In typical Greek fashion, it was mostly unfinished as I write this. Whole pages are blank. It reminds me of the houses you see in the countryside in Greece–concrete block walls partly finished with rebar sticking out the top. But eventually it will get done. The most essential page–where you buy tickets–is finished. And this is a big deal, because this is the first museum in Athens to offer tickets on the Internet.

Since I cannot travel to Greece for the opening, I’ve been traveling around the web gathering news. (See links on next page)So much is being written in newspapers, magazines and on web sites about the Acropolis Museum, about Greece, about the British Museum, about the British Museum vs. the Acropolis Museum…… that I decided just to hand you some references and let you go off to read these good sources, instead of risking repetitive redundancy. If you read nothing else, please read the Vanity Fair article by Christopher Hitchens, and then if you like to balance your point of view, read the Guardian article.

• A tour of the permanent collection on display at the New Acropolis Museum (Athens News Agency).
• Reuters reports that 200 fragments are returned To Greece by various European countries.
• A blog that discusses the ethical concerns of collection of antiquities
• Steven Moss of the Guardian gives the British point of view:
• This site displays some very nice pictures of the new displays in the Museum, as they will be seen to travelers to Greece.
• Vanity Fair’s Christopher Hitchens weighs in.

Note: Hitchens has written a book called The Parthenon Marbles, and it is worth quoting a couple of paragraphs from his article in Vanity Fair, particularly since just yesterday we were talking about Euripedes and Sophocles, Medea and Antigone:

“When we think of Athens in the fifth century b.c., we think chiefly of the theater of Euripides and Sophocles and of philosophy and politics—specifically democratic politics, of the sort that saw Pericles repeatedly re-elected in spite of complaints that he was overspending. And it’s true that Antigone was first performed as the Parthenon was rising, and Medea not all that long after the temple was finished. From drama to philosophy: Socrates himself was also a stonemason and sculptor, and it seems quite possible that he too took part in raising the edifice.”

“If the Mona Lisa had been sawed in two during the Napoleonic Wars and the separated halves had been acquired by different museums in, say, St. Petersburg and Lisbon, would there not be a general wish to see what they might look like if re-united? If you think my analogy is overdrawn, consider this: the body of the goddess Iris is at present in London, while her head is in Athens. The front part of the torso of Poseidon is in London, and the rear part is in Athens. And so on. This is grotesque.”

Will you try to get to Athens to see the Acropolis Museum? Do you agree with Christopher Hitchens? Or do you sympathize with the British “Museum of the whole world” point of view?

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Destination: Greece

Read/See:

Medea, by Euripides (Legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece)

Oedipus and Antigone, two plays by Sophocles, (Legends from the Royal Family of Thebes)

In a graduate school seminar, I became fixated on traveling to Greece.  The professor showed a series of slides of Greek theaters, each setting more spectacular than the last.

Delphi Theater photographed by "greekgeek"

Finally, he came to Delphi.  I can still see that picture in my mind, and to me, Delphi is the 2nd most important “must see” for the Greek tourist, right after the Parthenon.

On my first trip to Greece, a Smithsonian-sponsored bus tour, I mentioned to our guide that I had recently played the nurse in a production of Medea.  She said, “We are going to Epidaurus tomorrow. Would you like to speak your lines?” Would I?  Even more than breakfasting on yogurt with honey and walnuts!

Epidaurus, the sanctuary of Asclepios, founder of medicine, sits in a quiet grove of pines, a landscape that quickly cures whatever is ailing you. The theater, unearthed from under those trees on a hillside and reassembled, has perfect acoustics.  To test the way that sound carries, my new friends on the tour scattered themselves around the top rows of limestone seats which help carry the sound as clear as a bell. The enormous theater once seated 15,000 people.

I could not distinguish who was who when I entered the sacred center space. In olden days only trained actors and priests would tread on that ground. Today only tour guides are permitted. (draw your own comparisons.)  I walked into the historic place and spoke what I could remember of the Nurse’s lines, predicting Medea’s downfall, and a smattering of applause came from far above. I did not need applause. Not only was I in Greece, I was in one of those beautiful theaters. Not only was I IN the theater, but I was performing there. What a moment!

Even making allowance for my love of theater, I believe that your journey to Greece will be enhanced by some knowledge of classical Greek drama. Certainly the stories in these three plays are central to classical myth. Euripedes seems quite modern in his approach to character development, and Antigone will break your heart. Sophocles presents archetypes rather than the more approachable characters of Euripedes. Although you know who Oedipus is, if you have never seen the play performed on stage, you have a great treat awaiting you. Medea can stand in for the modern woman who wants to have it all but makes unthinkable choices and winds up paying a terrible terrible price.

Beyond that, theater was central to Greek life.  Not just the way movieplexes and streaming video are today.  Plays were presented at religious festivals. Theaters were built as offerings. Playwrights, actors and choruses won coveted awards. Statues were built to them and to the wealthy patrons who won points with the gods by financing performances.  You can see one such statue that still stands in the Plaka near the Roman Forum, and many others in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

If you go to Greece in July and August, you can see performances–Greek and English, ancient and modern, or musical– at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the ancient Roman theater, and at Epidaurus.  You can ask around, but I doubt anyone will remember my performance there.

Note:  See a list of  other posts in A Traveler’s Library about Greece.

Photograph by “Greekgeek” through Flickr, under Creative Commons license.

Have you ever been inspired to travel by a play that you have seen?

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Book: Mythology by Edith Hamilton

All this week we are celebrating the opening of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens next Saturday. The heat is on Britain to return the Parthenon marbles so obviously missing in the new museums’ displays.

It helps, when you travel to Greece, to make the acquaintance of gods and goddesses and their cavorting ways if you hope to understand the classical Greek statuary that adorns the Parthenon (or did adorn it before time and thievery took its toll). A little catechism in the religion of the classical age helps. Edith Hamilton’s Mythology,Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, can help.

Athena

The basics–Athena was designated the protector of the city named after her, and the Parthenon housed a gigantic statue of Athena, which has long since disappeared.  If you want to get an idea of what that statue was like, travel to  Nashville Tennessee, where they built an exact full-sized replica of the Parthenon for a World’s Fair in 1897.  The building itself is so accurate that the restorers of Athen’s Parthenon flew over to Nashville to check out measurements.

Since Athena’s statue had disappeared so long ago from her Greek temple, the sculptor in Tennessee used written accounts, which might have been a tad bit exaggerated.  Scholar’s have established that the classical Greek statues, far from being the pristine white we are used to, were painted in bright colors and adorned with metal and jewels.  I’m having a hard time coming to terms with that picture, and my impression of Nashville’s Athena, was that she resembled the girl in Walmart that we dismiss as trailer trash. (See her picture on the continuation)

You can’t help being impressed with the effort, though. Acres of gold leaf substitute for the alleged solid gold in the original.

The Parthenon Frieze

At any rate, every year in classical Athens, as the Great Panathenaea procession wound through Athens and up to the Acropolis where a troupe of virgins clothed the statue in hand-woven robes.  That procession was immortalized on friezes around the temple that were made in the workshop of the superstar sculptor of the day, Pheidias.

The frieze, installed around the inner temple, very high up, could not be seen by ordinary mortals.  Today, a portion of what is left after a few earthquakes and the explosion of gunpowder when the Ottoman Turks were using the temple as an armory, resides in Athens (40%), the British Museum (40%) and scattered around the world (20%).

Phidias’ genius exhibits itself in the rhythmic arrangement of lifelike figures and particularly in finding ways to fit the picture into the sloping ends of the pediment. This becomes very clear with the close up view that is rendered if you are a tourist in Athens at the New Acropolis Museum.

The Mythology

You may not immediately recognize the gods and heroes represented, but if you have done your reading, you will at least be able to nod sagely when a guide points out who is whom.  Edith Hamilton wrote the best guidebook to mythology in 1940. You can find it in newer editions, but you will be hard put to find a better, more readable guide. Hamilton’s book illustrates that the ancient Greeks knew how to tell a darned good story.

If you want something simpler and quicker, do not hesitate to visit the children’s book section in your library or book store. Kid’s books can be great guides for complex subjects like mythology.

Sign a petition to join my favorite cause,  asking the British Museum to return the marbles missing from the New Acropolis Museum.

See other articles about Greece from a Traveler’s Library.

Your thoughts? On the Parthenon, on Greek statuary, on the controversy–feel free to express any opinions here.

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Destination: Greece

Movie: My Life in Ruins

You would think I would learn. Long ago, in 1982, we had, Summer Lovers quite possibly the worst movie ever made in the most beautiful setting in the world, Santorini.  Then last year there was Mama Mia, set on the island of Skopelos. Well, granted a lot of people went to see that and think its just swell, but the reviewers held their noses. And I’m not even counting all the lame attempts at recreating gods and goddesses and heroes of the Odyssey or the Illiad.

Now the lovely and talented Nia Vardalos, of the hysterically funny My Big Fat Greek Wedding fame, gets stuck in an absolute stinker called My Life in Ruins.I am slapping my hand here to keep it from typing some silly take on the ‘Ruins’ word. Instead, I will give you this link to a conversation with Nia at Traveling Mamas site.

The movie’s dialogue is so incredibly lame, (thank you Mr. The Simpsons Writer) that the only person to rise above it is Richard Dreyfuss.

In fact, when the spotlight turns to Dreyfuss in the second act, the movie almost comes to life.  Thank goodness HE is not the one who has to give the name of the bus driver: Poupi Kaka. Funny? When I was in fifth grade.

Does this mean I do not think travelers should see this movie? Not at all.  I heartily recommend that you wait until it is available on DVD, rent it, and watch it with the sound off. The scenery–both the old broken marble stuff and the Greek guys–is magnificent. And, honestly, dear reader, on my first trip to Greece, the bus driver was just as good looking as the movie’s bus driver/soon to become lover, Alexis Georgoulis

If you want to see some great views of the Parthenon, Delphi, and Olympia, definitely see this movie’s scenery. And oh, yeah, an iconic shot of Santorini turns up, although how that got into the itinerary is a real geographical mystery. DOH!

Have you seen a really GOOD movie filmed with the glorious backdrop of Greece. PLEASE, tell me about it.  THANKS!

Meanwhile, this week will be greco-centric as I celebrate the opening of the New Acropolis Museum. (You can read more of  A Traveler’s Library articles about Greece.)

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Roman Forum evening shadows

Destination: Rome

Books: The Masters of Rome Series by Collen McCullough

It seems to me that is essential to have some understanding of ancient Rome if you are going to travel to today’s Rome. All those piles of rock and bits of arches in the forum, with the magnificent hulk of the Coliseum watching over it all look a lot less confusing if you know something about the daily life of the Romans at the pinnacle of the Roman Empire.

I imagine that I see togaed figures reclining on benches in the baths, or scurrying around from shop to shop trying to strike a good bargain so they can afford all those splendid mosaics in the courtyard of the summer place down at Herculaeum.

Colleen McCullough’s book are just the time ticket you need to get a look at Roman life among the wealthy, and a few hints about the life of other people in the Roman Empire also.  Like every period of history, when I imagine myself in a far distant time, I pick a good stratum of society. Wouldn’t you love to have lived in Renaissance Italy? Well, as a noble, or at least high merchant class, not as a peasant. With my love of Greece, I daydream about living in Athens in the 5th century B.C. However, not as a slave, of course. Although some scholars claim that all women were treated pretty much as slaves, others say the mothers and managers of households were revered.  And in the Roman Empire, I am the wife of a Senator (at least–if not a Caesar.) And as in Greece, the female role of courtesan sounds pretty cushy.

Back to the point. McCullough wrote seven books based on life in Rome.  The First Man in Rome started the series, and while I enjoyed it, I found it had almost too much detail. There are Roman experts who quibble with her history, although for a novelist, she did a mighty fine pile of research, in my opinion.

So dramatic was ancient Rome that many fiction books exist based on the real history. A web page devoted to such books,  Fictional Rome, contains a page on Colleen McCullough. If you love Rome, or love ancient history, you’ll be trapped and find it difficult to emerge.  Try to get out by tomorrow when we talk about the movie Angels and Demons, which looks at ecclesiastical Rome rather than ancient Rome, but provides a heck of a travelogue along the way.

————–

Photograph by VMB, all rights reserved.

We have  spent this week  at A Traveler’s Library focused on Italy. Do you like several days of focus on one country? Or would you rather mix things up and have a different destination each day? Let me know, because I’m planning a celebration of the opening of the Greek’s New Acropolis Museum in June. One day or several?

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Destinations: Greece, Turkey, Egypt and the British Museum in London, Metropolitan Museum in NYC, the Louvre in Paris, and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles

Part of the Parthenon Freize in British Museum

Welcome to my traveler’s library.

Have you ever wondered how the lovely antiquities from some long-gone civilization arrived at a major museum? Looters have dug up treasures as long as people have been burying them. But when Napoleon set out to Egypt, he took an army of scholars with him and in recording and taking treasures, they started a trend.

Nineteenth century collectors took it for granted that the more advanced countries had a right to collect “because they alone know how to appreciate them,” as the author of an 1835 book, Voyage de Luxor said. Some people still argue that point of view. Others have become bothered by the lack of provenance on many objects in museums. Both factions will be enthralled by Sharon Waxman’s book, Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World.

I got hooked on the debate over the morality of collecting antiquities when I first visited the Acropolis in Athens thirty years ago and saw the blank spaces where Lord Elgin relieved the Greeks of pieces of magnificent carving. He wanted them because at the end of the nineteenth century it was all the rage to decorate ones’ estate with statuary from Greece and Rome. Eventually, he wound up broke and sold his treasures to the British Museum.

In 2008 I traveled to London and visited the enthralling British Museum. Of course I toured its most popular space, the display of the Parthenon marbles. Forty-eight hours later, I was in Athens, visiting the Parthenon for the fifth time, on a scorching hot day. I also got a sneak-preview of the soaring spaces of the New Acropolis Museum and the space the Greek government has prepared for the return of the Parthenon marbles from England.

Opinionated as I am about the Parthenon marbles (which I will never call the Elgin marbles) Sharon Waxman made me question my stance on the rightful role of museums with her well-researched look at the needs of countries like Egypt, Turkey and Greece and the rationale of world class museums. Since the New Acropolis Museum has been completed, the argument has become more public. For a frequently updated overview of the looting of antiquities worldwide, see this blog .

While Loot certainly will not be found in the travel section of your bookstore, it nevertheless belongs on the travel library shelves. It helps readers understand the cultures of Egypt, Turkey and Greece and the long-gone civilizations that inhabited the land the modern countries now occupy. It also adds understanding of a culture the traveler may never have thought about—that of museums.

Where do you stand on the debate about ancient artifacts? Are their limits to what foreign countries should be able to keep from the source country?

NEW: Sign a petition to join my favorite cause, return the Parthenon Marbles taken to England by Lord Elgin.

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