The most tedious movie I have ever seen centered on the unarguable premise that the Parthenon marbles belong at the Parthenon. Tortured, dramatic speeches were interspersed with scenes of the Grande Bretagne ablaze with molotov cocktails. It was so dull it was nearly treasonous.
Where cinema fails, architecture comes through. Come nightfall, the Acropolis Museum is all poignance and passion.
For those who haven't been, the museum at any time of day is contextually brilliant. Statues and artifacts fill the first two floors. The individuality of some of these is arresting:
They are full of immediacy, intimacy. You know you are before a likeness of someone who lived.
There is a Kore with beautifully plump cheeks and some astonishing traces of blue and red(!)- thrilling to see. A display of the bold pigments that were used literally floods your imagination with color, and you see everything differently (kind of like The Wizzard of Oz). The top floor is stunning- a 1:1 model of the Parthenon, with the original sculptures where they were, and plaster casts of the marbles that are sadly elsewhere where they likewise would be. The initials "BM" are all over the place. As a practical argument, it is matchless. As a contextual experience, complete.
If I'm only at a museum once- just passing through town like say Frankfurt- the joy of seeing is seriously mitigated by the urgency to take it all in. There ends up being more reading and looking than seeing- it is very hard to just be in the moment when you are at last face-to-face with a much anticipated thing seen a hundred times over in reproduction. I'm usually able to give myself over to the experience only when I have the luxury of visiting over and over again.
The Acropolis Museum is happily such a place. But that is not what made a recent evening there so mesmerizing. The top floor has walls entirely of glass, and as you walk through the magnificently reconstructed ersatz Parthenon, you see the real one close enough to wave to.
Whether the effect of the glass at night was calculated I cannot say, but it makes for an experience entirely different from the day- one so moving and contemplative as to completely transcend the cultural. In the evening, voices drop as light dims, and a reverent hush falls over the museum. The glow of Parthenon itself against the velvety night sky dominates the room- not just visually, but emotionally. I found I was hardly looking at the sculptures at all, but instead at the glass. The sculptures become, quite literally, reflections of the past, their luminous images hovering in the night sky somewhere between the museum and the place that they came from, like they are reaching out to it.
Forget what I said about being "in the moment." There is no moment- time is suspended. And you are just hovering there, like the reflections, between the present and memory.
The Acropolis museum is at 15 Dionysiou Areopagitou Street (make time for a stroll on this broad, elegant pedestrian promenade that wraps around the Acropolis- you can follow it all the way to Thisseo) and has its own metro stop. The museum has great hours- even in summer, you can enjoy a nighttime visit- it's open until 10 pm on Fridays- For more information, click here. For more information on the unification of the Parthenon marbles, click here.
More things I love to do in Athens:
An Athens weekend of Picasso and Pastis.
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