On 10 September 2026 Greece hosted the historic UNESCO Goodwill Ambassadors Gathering in Athens.
A highlight of the summit was a major fundraising gala dinner held at the Acropolis Museum to benefit the UNESCO Culture Fund with the specific aim of supporting international efforts to combat the illicit trafficking of cultural property and support the repatriation of cultural heritage.
The keynote address was delivered by Mareva Grabowski-Mitsotakis, the wife of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The Greek First Lady made a most eloquent and heartfelt plea for the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures, declaring that the time has come for the “two halves of a mutilated temple” to be finally reunited.
The speech can be watched here:
So powerful and passionate was her address that an edited version of her remarks follows:
“Good evening everyone, distinguished guests, ambassadors, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a wonderful evening and I’m so happy to be here with all of you amongst friends that are here to celebrate UNESCO’s Fund for Culture’s role in the protection of our cultural heritage and its strengthening of international cultural cooperation.
Human creativity in the age of AI
Dear friends, in the age of algorithms and omnipresent screens, real human creativity is our most vital anchor. The architect Phidias poured human soul into a monument that has defied millennia.
The monument that towers above us tonight. No technology can synthesize that spark.
The enduring magnetic pull of works like the Parthenon reminds us that even now we crave the touch of human hands.
In the age of AI, experiencing true art is a vital reclamation of our humanity.
Two and a half thousand years ago, this city served as the cultural and architectural backdrop to the birth of democracy and the advent of a new dawn in thinking from philosophy, ethics to education, medicine, and mathematics.
Today, this museum, the Acropolis Museum, is the modern-day custodian of that cultural heritage, the protector and preserver of Athenians’ extraordinary history.
Which is why I couldn’t imagine a better venue in a more culturally important setting in which to speak to you tonight.
A chasm at the core of Athenian antiquity
But I can’t help feeling more than a little sad too. Why? Because there remains a yawning gap, a chasm even, at the core of Athenian antiquity.
And that has got to change.
It is a gap that tears at the heart of every Greek citizen.
A gap that isn’t metaphorical, but real and physical. A gap that you can see every day here in this very museum.
Because while a little over half of what we call the Parthenon Sculptures are displayed here in Athens, the remainder as we know sit languishing 1,500 miles away in Bloomsbury in a windowless room on the grounds of the British Museum in London.
Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come not just for two halves of the same monument to be reunited, but for that monument’s artistic, architectural, and historical integrity to be restored.
After all, when this museum was first envisioned, it had one clear purpose, to show the world, unashamedly, that when the critics said Greece had no suitable location in which to display the Parthenon Sculptures, we were able to say, “Of course we do.”
That is why we must reunite the Parthenon Sculptures in this museum so that it can be seen as intended, as one, in the city in which they were carved more than two millennia ago.
A painful separation
Of course, the arguments around the reunification of the sculptures are well rehearsed.
For decades, successive Greek governments have been clear that these sculptures were not transported to Britain in some benign act of love but hacked violently from their resting place and squirreled away by Lord Elgin to London, where in 1816 Elgin, deep in debt, sold them to the British Museum for £35,000. 210 years ago. That is where they remain.
Of course, I could go further and further and further. I could tell you that the myth of the Ottoman firman is just that, a myth, but there was and is no permission document in the archives that said it was okay for Elgin to do what he did. And I could tell you that polls consistently show majority support among the British public when it comes to where the sculptures should be seen. And it isn’t in Bloomsbury.
That said, it isn’t my purpose tonight to relitigate every twist of this painful separation.
And neither am I able, when it comes to striking a deal on reunification, to answer the question of how. This is the job of two governments and the British Museum, not mine.
Rather, tonight I’m here to shed light on the historical, the ethical, and the cultural case for the why. Why should these sculptures be reunified?
First: one monument, one story
The first and most obvious point is that the frieze and the sculptures were intended, as I have mentioned, to be seen as one, united together in situ here in Athens.
After all, the Parthenon was conceived as a single unified entity with Doric columns supporting carved metopes beneath triangular pediments.
An extraordinary inner frieze depicted not just gods and heroes, but a contemporary story. A story about ordinary Athenians. The story of the Panathenaic procession.
This then was art, not for decoration’s sake, but art as part of the edifice itself. And that told a continuous story about the importance of democracy and the people. But cut that story into pieces and the story no longer makes any sense. And yet this is precisely what happened to the sculptures that once adorned the Parthenon.
In breaking off the sculptures, Elgin wasn’t generously seeking to preserve the story of ancient Athens. He was actively colluding in breaking that story apart.
Let me put it in another way. Would the enigma of the Mona Lisa work if half of the painting sat in the Louvre and the other half hung in another global museum?
Of course not. And what about Stonehenge, like the Acropolis, a UNESCO World Heritage site? Would our understanding of the Neolithic stone circle look quite the same if one summer half of the stones were carted off to a museum in another country or another continent?
No, it wouldn’t.
That is why only the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures can ensure that this story is complete.
Second: reunification is not the floodgates
Which brings me to my second point. The deliberate conflation of the premise behind cultural restitution or loans with a very different premise of architectural reunification.
Contrary to what critics claim, reunification would not open the floodgates for endless restitution demands.
Take the Bayeux Tapestry which opened to the public in London earlier today.
The recent deal saw the tapestry shipped to the British Museum which is undoubtedly groundbreaking. An example of Entente Cordiale and cooperation that could enhance the cultural partnership between two countries.
But that’s where the parallel with the sculptures ends. The Bayeux Tapestry is on loan.
Objects like tapestries, standalone statues, or artefacts are self-contained works of art.
Loaning them or moving them does not sever their structural context.
Architectural reunification is a whole different story.
Reunification is not about moving or loaning individual art objects between museum displays. It is about restoring the integrity of a fragmented architectural ensemble.
Comparing a standalone tapestry to a physically mutilated temple fundamentally misrepresents the nature of architectural heritage.
Rectifying that wrong by reunifying the sculptures in Athens is not about the return of individual artefacts or about stripping collections from museums across the globe.
This is about a unique case, a one-off case, a case of reunifying what should never have been pulled apart.
Third: institutional ownership or heritage conservation?
And one final thought, I have the utmost respect for the British Museum and its custodians.
But when it says it wants to strike a balance between sharing objects and, in its own words, maintaining the integrity of the incredible collection we hold at the museum, I believe that it’s missing the point of cultural partnership while exposing a fundamental ethical flaw in its arguments.
A museum collection is by its very nature an artificial modern-day assembly of disparate objects.
But the Parthenon is something very different.
It is an original singular monument of global cultural significance.
Sacrificing the completeness of the actual monument to preserve the artificial size of a 19th century collection is, in my view, prioritizing institutional ownership over heritage conservation.
So I’d ask respectfully, is the administrative integrity of a museum collection more valuable than the structural and historical integrity of a 2,500-year-old UNESCO World Heritage Monument?
I do not believe that this is the case.
A room without windows, or the vista of Athens?
And let me end with a question.
If we were starting from scratch and we were to accept that this is about the structure and historical integrity of the Parthenon itself and the story of the frieze as one complete and in situ with a monument it once graced, then I would ask you this.
Would anyone seriously choose a room without windows in a museum in central London or the vista we can see all around us tonight here in Athens?
I think we all know the answer.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
Dear friends, that is why I believe the time has come for us to publicly advocate for reunification wherever we are.
Whenever we can, so that these incredible sculptures can be seen as one here in this museum in the shadow of the monument onto which they were so beautifully carved.
Because while I do not believe there is an easy answer to the challenges I have outlined tonight, I do believe that there is an answer.
This is a time we found it. In the end, cultural partnership is only truly sustainable if it brings people together.
When it comes to the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures, there is, I believe, an unprecedented opportunity for Greece and for the United Kingdom to do just that.
But in our ever-changing world, such opportunities come perhaps once in a lifetime. So we need to grab them and we need to grab them now.
Thank you very much.”
Mareva Grabowski-Mitsotakis
George Vardas is the Arts & Culture Editor and a long-time advocate for the protection of cultural heritage and the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures.
