Here's an article from today's WSJ. Sorry I can't just post a link, due to password protection. What does everyone think?
Greeks Must Walk a Fine Line
As They Restore the Parthenon
By GEOFF WINESTOCK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
ATHENS, Greece -- Hope Merembeliomakis squints unhappily at three gleaming columns newly erected on the east porch of the Parthenon. Their smooth white marble contrasts sharply with the pitted pink-gray stone of the rest of the ancient temple.
"They should stain it or chip it or something," says Ms. Merembeliomakis, a student from Toronto who spends summers with relatives in Greece. "I don't want it to look brand-new."
As they prepare to host the 2004 Summer Olympics, the Greeks are stirring up an impassioned debate with a $30 million plan to bring the 2,500-year-old landmark atop the Acropolis closer to what it was before time, wars and thievery reduced it mostly to rubble.
Purists bridle at the idea of using even a little modern-day marble to reproduce the subtly tapered columns that lend the Parthenon its remarkable architectural grace. "What we are getting is a kind of fifth century B.C. theme park," says Mary Beard, a classics professor at Britain's Cambridge University and author of a book about the Parthenon.
Already, backers of a major overhaul have installed reproductions of some of the sculptures and friezes that once adorned the Parthenon's eaves. Some critics accuse the Greek government of deceiving tourists by not drawing any distinction between materials that are thousands of years old and those that came out of a stone quarry just last year.
The Parthenon is such a potent symbol of Greek nationalism that in 1992 Coca-Cola Co. apologized to the nation for an ad that depicted Coke bottles where the temple's celebrated columns should have been. Completed in 439 B.C., it survived mostly intact for centuries. But in 1687, the temple, where the occupying Turks were storing gunpowder, blew up when the Venetian army hit it with a cannonball.
In the decades that followed, tourists and antiquarians descended on the site, carting off souvenirs. In the early 19th century, Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin, Britain's ambassador, took some of the Parthenon's best sculptures. In 1816, he sold them to the British Museum. Greece has waged a long-running diplomatic campaign for their return.
After evicting the Turks in 1833, the Greeks set about rebuilding the Parthenon, but they often slapped marble blocks together in the wrong order and clamped them with iron rods that corroded, shattering the ancient stone. Over the years, Athens's acidic air pollution blurred the detail on the friezes and sculptures that hadn't been carried off.
Undoing Damage
In the 1970s, as Greece emerged from military rule, the new civilian government assigned a team of young architects and engineers to undo some of the damage. The team found thousands of stone fragments atop the Acropolis that could be reassembled to restore some of the Parthenon's former glory.
Greece's Central Archaeological Council ultimately gave the go-ahead for the restoration. In the 1980s it began to consider proposals for restoring the structure, imposing one condition: No more than 20% of any restored element could be composed of new materials.
Restoring ravaged cultural treasures often raises anguishing questions. Some critics say that experts went too far in reviving the gaudy colors of Leonardo da Vinci's fresco of "The Last Supper" in Milan as well as the monumental ceiling by Michelangelo in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel.
In Greece, even radicals don't want to end up with a shiny full-scale replica of the original Parthenon. There's already one of those in Nashville, Tenn., built in 1897 to mark the city's centennial.
The Greek Archeological Council tries to keep the peace between the pro- and anti-reconstruction camps by consulting archaeologists, architects and historians world-wide about even minor changes. That's led to some unusual compromises.
Mary Ioannidou, director of the Parthenon Restoration Project, wanted to re-erect each of the six columns that once graced the east porch, while minimalists argued for only one. The council decided three would be recreated and three left as stumps. The three new columns were recently raised, and now workers are experimenting with tea, mud and a ferrous-oxide solution to age the new marble.
Ms. Ioannidou concedes that some of the work is controversial, but she says all the changes are designed to be reversible. And, in many cases, she says, they help stabilize the existing structure. "We have to balance conservative and progressive strands of archaeology," she adds.
The project is barely halfway to its 2004 goal. The building still looks like an empty shell. Workers are just starting to lay the marble blocks that are to become the walls of the cella, or inner sanctuary. They have yet to finish hanging new ceilings on the imposing columns of the Propylia gateway nearby on the Acropolis, and they haven't even begun reassembling the small temple of Athena Nike, not far away.
Big Headaches
Nikolas Toganides, the project's chief architect, says he has had big headaches since the government put the Olympics pressure on in 1999. The first crane installed in the inner sanctum to help hoist marble blocks didn't meet specifications and had to be replaced. Recently, workers at the site struck over pension benefits.
In her office, just south of the temple, draftswoman Kleopatra Metalla stares at pencil drawings of 230 stone fragments, trying to identify enough original material from the north wall of the cella to persuade the Archaeological Council to approve a complete reconstruction. It's slow work looking for clues in the marks left by ancient workmen and the patterns of wind erosion. "In three years I have only identified 130 pieces," she says.
Nearby, in the basement of the Acropolis Museum, sculptor George Argyris has cast several copies of a wide marble frieze depicting ancient Athenians on horseback. He has put different amounts of sand in each, trying to give the copies an authentic pink-gray color. He says his version will look better than the museum's pollution-scarred originals because his cast was made from a 19th-century copy.
After the Olympics, there will be more sculptures to reproduce. Architects are also thinking of bolstering the cella's walls with a modern titanium grid. Some archaeologists even want to recreate part of the ancient roof, which was blown away more than 300 years ago.
Write to Geoff Winestock at geoff.winestock@wsj.com
Updated August 5, 2002
Greeks Must Walk a Fine Line
As They Restore the Parthenon
By GEOFF WINESTOCK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
ATHENS, Greece -- Hope Merembeliomakis squints unhappily at three gleaming columns newly erected on the east porch of the Parthenon. Their smooth white marble contrasts sharply with the pitted pink-gray stone of the rest of the ancient temple.
"They should stain it or chip it or something," says Ms. Merembeliomakis, a student from Toronto who spends summers with relatives in Greece. "I don't want it to look brand-new."
As they prepare to host the 2004 Summer Olympics, the Greeks are stirring up an impassioned debate with a $30 million plan to bring the 2,500-year-old landmark atop the Acropolis closer to what it was before time, wars and thievery reduced it mostly to rubble.
Purists bridle at the idea of using even a little modern-day marble to reproduce the subtly tapered columns that lend the Parthenon its remarkable architectural grace. "What we are getting is a kind of fifth century B.C. theme park," says Mary Beard, a classics professor at Britain's Cambridge University and author of a book about the Parthenon.
Already, backers of a major overhaul have installed reproductions of some of the sculptures and friezes that once adorned the Parthenon's eaves. Some critics accuse the Greek government of deceiving tourists by not drawing any distinction between materials that are thousands of years old and those that came out of a stone quarry just last year.
The Parthenon is such a potent symbol of Greek nationalism that in 1992 Coca-Cola Co. apologized to the nation for an ad that depicted Coke bottles where the temple's celebrated columns should have been. Completed in 439 B.C., it survived mostly intact for centuries. But in 1687, the temple, where the occupying Turks were storing gunpowder, blew up when the Venetian army hit it with a cannonball.
In the decades that followed, tourists and antiquarians descended on the site, carting off souvenirs. In the early 19th century, Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin, Britain's ambassador, took some of the Parthenon's best sculptures. In 1816, he sold them to the British Museum. Greece has waged a long-running diplomatic campaign for their return.
After evicting the Turks in 1833, the Greeks set about rebuilding the Parthenon, but they often slapped marble blocks together in the wrong order and clamped them with iron rods that corroded, shattering the ancient stone. Over the years, Athens's acidic air pollution blurred the detail on the friezes and sculptures that hadn't been carried off.
Undoing Damage
In the 1970s, as Greece emerged from military rule, the new civilian government assigned a team of young architects and engineers to undo some of the damage. The team found thousands of stone fragments atop the Acropolis that could be reassembled to restore some of the Parthenon's former glory.
Greece's Central Archaeological Council ultimately gave the go-ahead for the restoration. In the 1980s it began to consider proposals for restoring the structure, imposing one condition: No more than 20% of any restored element could be composed of new materials.
Restoring ravaged cultural treasures often raises anguishing questions. Some critics say that experts went too far in reviving the gaudy colors of Leonardo da Vinci's fresco of "The Last Supper" in Milan as well as the monumental ceiling by Michelangelo in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel.
In Greece, even radicals don't want to end up with a shiny full-scale replica of the original Parthenon. There's already one of those in Nashville, Tenn., built in 1897 to mark the city's centennial.
The Greek Archeological Council tries to keep the peace between the pro- and anti-reconstruction camps by consulting archaeologists, architects and historians world-wide about even minor changes. That's led to some unusual compromises.
Mary Ioannidou, director of the Parthenon Restoration Project, wanted to re-erect each of the six columns that once graced the east porch, while minimalists argued for only one. The council decided three would be recreated and three left as stumps. The three new columns were recently raised, and now workers are experimenting with tea, mud and a ferrous-oxide solution to age the new marble.
Ms. Ioannidou concedes that some of the work is controversial, but she says all the changes are designed to be reversible. And, in many cases, she says, they help stabilize the existing structure. "We have to balance conservative and progressive strands of archaeology," she adds.
The project is barely halfway to its 2004 goal. The building still looks like an empty shell. Workers are just starting to lay the marble blocks that are to become the walls of the cella, or inner sanctuary. They have yet to finish hanging new ceilings on the imposing columns of the Propylia gateway nearby on the Acropolis, and they haven't even begun reassembling the small temple of Athena Nike, not far away.
Big Headaches
Nikolas Toganides, the project's chief architect, says he has had big headaches since the government put the Olympics pressure on in 1999. The first crane installed in the inner sanctum to help hoist marble blocks didn't meet specifications and had to be replaced. Recently, workers at the site struck over pension benefits.
In her office, just south of the temple, draftswoman Kleopatra Metalla stares at pencil drawings of 230 stone fragments, trying to identify enough original material from the north wall of the cella to persuade the Archaeological Council to approve a complete reconstruction. It's slow work looking for clues in the marks left by ancient workmen and the patterns of wind erosion. "In three years I have only identified 130 pieces," she says.
Nearby, in the basement of the Acropolis Museum, sculptor George Argyris has cast several copies of a wide marble frieze depicting ancient Athenians on horseback. He has put different amounts of sand in each, trying to give the copies an authentic pink-gray color. He says his version will look better than the museum's pollution-scarred originals because his cast was made from a 19th-century copy.
After the Olympics, there will be more sculptures to reproduce. Architects are also thinking of bolstering the cella's walls with a modern titanium grid. Some archaeologists even want to recreate part of the ancient roof, which was blown away more than 300 years ago.
Write to Geoff Winestock at geoff.winestock@wsj.com
Updated August 5, 2002
Something shld be done to protect it first fr the atmosphere.
), but they are not today, and that's a pity.
