Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on thee,In Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Lord Byron, never a man to mince his words, dedicates a couple of fuming stanzas to one of the greatest cultural controversies ever: the removal of half of the surviving sculptural decoration of the Parthenon and its subsequent shipping to England. Responsible for this act of cultural vandalism (according to the Greeks) or cultural preservation (according to the English) was another lord, Lord Elgin, who happily chiseled off the finest pieces, broke them up for easy transport and eventually sold them off to a reluctant British government. With half of the decoration in the British Museum in London and the other half in the Acropolis Museum in Athens, the Parthenon has lost much of its splendour. Today, the semipermanent scaffolding, like braces on an octogenarian, turns the entire thing into a rather sorry affair. A quick look at what remains of the Parthenon and the adjacent temples on the Acropolis.
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 behoved
To guard those relics ne'er to be restored.
Curst be the hour when from 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 Propylaea: the entrance to the Acropolis |
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| The Parthenon: the temple of Athena |
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| Detail of the Parthenon Frieze |
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| Parthenon floor plan |
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| The Erechtheum |
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| Marble base |
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