1st of Acropolis sculptures successfully transferred to new museum
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
The first of the Acropolis's ancient sculptures was gingerly plucked from the top of the Parthenon temple and successfully transferred Sunday to a new museum at the foot of the hilltop citadel.
Culture Minister Michalis Liapis called the meticulously choreographed, 90-minute operation - the first of many in coming weeks - a "historic event of global significance."
Over the next few months, 4,500 antiquities, mostly marble sculptures dating to the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, will be shifted into the new Acropolis Museum 400 meters away.
On Sunday, crews in three cranes moved a 2.3-ton section of the Parthenon frieze: a 160-meter-long strip sculpted in relief with some 360 human and 250 animal figures from a religious procession.