After conservative UK leaders refused to send Parthenon fragments home to Greece, a new government has ushered ‘constructive’ negotiations over a return, reported DW.

For decades, Greek authorities have been arguing for the permanent return of the so-called Parthenon Sculptures, also known as the Elgin Marbles.

These include about half of the surviving fragments of a 160-meter-long (520-foot) frieze from the Parthenon Temple, which dates back around 2,500 years. They currently sit in the collection of the British Museum in London.

Greece wants them returned to Athens after they were taken from the Acropolis around 200 years ago. Former UK prime ministers Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak rejected any such move.

“The UK has cared for the Elgin marbles for generations,” Sunak said in 2023. “Our galleries and museums are funded by taxpayers because they are a huge asset to this country.”

But in December 2024, UK prime minister Keir Starmer hosted Greek president Kyriakos Mitsotakis in London just as the British Museum announced it had been holding “constructive” negotiations with Athens over the return of marbles.

British Museum chairman George Osborne said that “at some point, some of the sculptures” could be sent to Greece in return for “treasures” from Athens.

As reported by AFP, Greek culture minister Lina Mendoni said a deal still needed “time and work” but added that both sides had “broken the ice.”

She also noted that the UK Labour government elected in 2024 did “not have the negativity of prior governments.”

The hope of a swap deal was further boosted when Constantine Tassoulas, a leading proponent for the restitution of the Parthenon sculptures, became the Greek president in February.

As a culture minister a decade ago, Tassoulas helped revive Greece’s campaign to reclaim the Parthenon antiquities. Amal Clooney, wife of actor George Clooney, helped to drive international awareness about the restitution claim.

Reluctance to return marbles

Presently, legal barriers make it difficult for the marbles to be returned to Athens. The British Museum Act of 1963 prevents the British Museum from permanently removing objects from its collections, with only a few exceptions.

Meanwhile, Tiffany Jenkins, the author of Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended up in Museums and Why They Should Keep Them (2016), a book that argues the Parthenon Sculptures should remain in the UK, has recently been appointed to the board of trustees of The British Museum.

The British Museum has long argued that the marbles were acquired legally and should remain in the UK.

Claims to the Parthenon Sculptures began when they were taken from Greece under order by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople – which controlled Athens until 1832.

Elgin’s staff began removing the antiquities from the Acropolis in 1801 and later sold them to the British government, along with hundreds of other antique items taken from Athens.

Many other marble sculpture fragments of the Parthenon frieze are currently in the Athens Acropolis Museum, which opened its doors in 2009.

Professor Nikolaos Stampolidis, director-general of the Acropolis Museum, spoke at a conference in Switzerland in March about the unifying power of restitution.

“Today, the democracies of the entire free world should support the return and reunification of the Parthenon sculptures to Athens, the mother of Western civilisation, the cradle of all democracies, so that their significance may once again be celebrated, united,” he said. “Greece is not asking this for itself alone. It is asking it for all of humanity, as an example of reunification.”

Vatican fragments back in Greece

In 2023, the Vatican finalised the process of returning several Parthenon marble fragments. The three pieces in the Vatican Museum’s collection have been there since the 19th century.

They finally returned to Athens on March 7, 2023, said the Vatican.

One is a fragment of the head of a horse that was pulling Athena’s chariot in the frieze. Another depicts a young boy’s head, believed to be participating in a procession to commemorate the founding of Athens.

In December 2022, Pope Francis gave them to Ieronymos II, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, “as a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth,” according to the Vatican. Similarly, in January 2023, another fragment of the Parthenon sculptures depicting the foot of a goddess was returned to Athens by the Antonino Salinas Regional Archaeological Museum in Palermo, Sicily.