The Great Court at the British Museum
Not having been for a while, we took advantage of the British Museum’s late night opening times tonight, and weaved our way through the steadily busy Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and Rome, and Middle East galleries. Attracting tourists and Londoners alike, the later openings (until 20.30, although the Great Court is open until 23.00) are clearly popular with museum goers.
With all the hype and bluster surrounding ‘The Last Emperor‘ exhibition, it’s easy to forget that such iconic artefacts as the Parthenon Marbles can be seen in the London museum, and that most of the galleries have free entry. It was the stolen Greek statues and metopes that I’d wanted to see most, not believing that I’d not made the effort before.
The most impressive thing about them is their age. Over 2,500 years old, the detail on them hasn’t withered much, though missing heads, limbs, and chipped surfaces tell a different story of long travel and custody battles. There has long been a campaign to reunite the fragments of sculpture from the Parthenon temple, which are now spread over a handful of museums in a handful of countries.
Controversially, the British Museum’s position has long been one of defiance, the institution receiving them from the British Government when Lord Elgin sold them in 1816, after taking them from the ruined Parthenon temple in the early 1800s. A new glass-topped museum is being built at the Acropolis site in Greece, where the Greeks are keen to reunite the statues and frieze.
Sources state that it is now inadvisable, and not feasible to send the frieze pediments, metopes, and pediment figures back to their homeland. A fascinating evening then, but we did think it a shame that Greek tourists have to come to London to see large parts of their history.