Anger in Athens: the Parthenon a treasury loan from the British Museum at the Hermitage

"Provocation against the Greek people," these are the words of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. Greece is angry against the British Museum. The London museum has to lend the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg a centerpiece of his collection Ilissus, the Greek god of the river. The problem is that Ilissus should not be lent by Athens, which believes it was stolen by the British in Greece in the early 19th century.

"Last year, says Richard Lambert, President of the Trustees of the British Museum, the British Museum has loaned more than 5,000 items to 330 museums around the world. If we are certain that the object can be moved, some of us it will be made, some of it is on loan to an institution that wants to love and show it to the public, so we're happy to pay it. "

The British Museum has about 60% of the 75 meter frieze of the Parthenon marbles major piece of the temple. This is the first time that many of the Parthenon decor elements, carried out in Greece by the British diplomat Lord Elgin, leaves the British Museum. Ilissos is lent to the Hermitage until January 18 on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the Russian Museum. The Greek government has refused to take these statues. Athens, a loan would amount to endorse the London property on the Parthenon Marbles.

Greece calls for thirty years the return of the sculptures that decorated the Acropolis in Athens for more than two millennia. Lord Elgin claimed to have obtained the Ottoman Empire that ruled Greece at the time, permission to take the friezes in 1803, Version refuted by Athens. The Greek government has appointed to examine possible ways of complaint, the services of the British lawyer Amal Clooney, wife of actor George Clooney, who has made a very media in October visit to Greece. The Greek government expects the London response to a recent request for mediation, promoted by UNESCO, which he sent to Britain.