Acropolis Museum

After visiting the Acropolis, we headed to the brand new Acropolis Museum.  It was very nice.  When you approach the building, you suddenly realize that you are walking on a glass floor that allows you to see down into an excavation site.  As we arrived, there were two archeologists who were cleaning some of the mosaic tiles that had been discovered on the site.  We stood right on top of them to watch - pretty cool. (Some other visitors got a laugh out of them when they started making shade puppets right over their work space - ha!)

Inside, there were lots of pots and sculptures on display.  Delaney took an interest in many of the items and had me read the labels to her.  There was a good historical video that explained how the building was put together and the different artistic elements on it.  I didn't realize it had been a temple to the goddess Athena, a Christian church, and a muslim mosque over the years.  Toward the end of the video it talks about how the structure fell to ruin over the years, ending with how the British Lord Elgin brutally ripped many of the sculptures from the edifice and carted them back to London for display (I've actually seen the exhibit in the British Museum).  The Greek government has asked that these sculptures be returned to Greece for display in the museum, but the British have not agreed to do so yet.  The Acropolis museum has beautiful display space for them with lots of replica plaster casts on display at the moment.  It will be interesting to see how long the British Museum chooses to hold on to them.