The transportation of the sculptures and the bas-reliefs from the temple of Athena Parthenos to the New Acropolis Museum started. A little bit before 09:30am this morning, the first blue 2.3 tons box was lifted by three cranes at the Acropolis. For about an hour the valuable box arrived at the New Acropolis building, where it was greeted with applauses by the Minister of Culture Mihalis Liapidis, the architect of the museum Bernar Shoumi, the director of the future museum Dimitris Papadermalis, hundreds of journalists, students from the primary school in Plaka and representatives of the Greek Scout Organization.

The first box, which was successfully transported this morning, consists of the second sculpture from the Northern part of the Parthenon, which depicts a young shepherd walking towards the altar, where he will be offered as sacrifice for the goddess Athena Parthenos. The sculpture will be placed in the Parthenon hall, on the third floor in the New Acropolis Museum. Its unwrapping will take 2 days, after which it will be covered with a transparent plexiglass cover, so it will not be covered by dust or affected by the atmosphere condition until the opening of the museum.

The whole transport operation of the valuable sculptures and bass-reliefs form the Parthenon to the New Acropolis Museum will take 4 months, depending on the weather conditions. 124 boxes have been packed with more than 300 exhibits inside. They will be transferred mostly 4 boxes per day. After their arrival in the New museum, they will be placed on a special metal platform, which will slowly transfer them to their permanent display position.

“I am exceptionally happy form I am seeing here today and I would like to say that it is fruit of 30 year hard work of engineers, chemists, and architects,” said the architect the New museum bernar Shoumi, visibly touched. All EU ambassadors, including the British one, were invited to the event. The Greek media constantly imply that the UK has the obligation to return the Parthenon marbles to Greece, which are in the British museum. London has always avoided agreeing to any questions regarding this topic.