(Bloomberg) -- Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met the U.K.’s Boris Johnson in London and explicitly stated that the famed Elgin Marbles should be returned to Athens. He didn’t appear to make much ground.
“I raised the issue with prime minister Johnson today and I very much intend to continue working hard until the Parthenon sculptures have been returned permanently to the Acropolis museum,” Mitsotakis said at an event at the Science Museum.
It’s an emotional bone of contention for Greece, and one that often spills into the political arena. At the start of the 19th century, Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Lord Elgin, removed the ancient sculptures from the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis hill and shipped them to England by sea.
For 200 years, a succession of prominent Greeks and national leaders have demanded them back. Johnson’s own spokesman has said it’s a matter for the British Museum, where the artifacts reside, and not for the U.K. government.
While Athens’s new Acropolis Museum, inaugurated in 2009, could house the treasures, the British Museum has been reluctant to back their return to Greece because it would spell the end of a major London tourist attraction.
“They’re here because they were stolen,” Mitsotakis said in an ITV interview Tuesday ahead of the meeting in the U.K. capital. “I don’t like to talk about the return of marbles, I like to talk about the reunification of the marbles.”
The Greek premier’s plan is to make his case by saying that the general argument for keeping the marbles at the British Museum is outdated. “We want the sculptures back for good, so we won’t settle for a loan,” he said.
Still, Mitsotakis has signaled some flexibility, suggesting that Greece could lend the British Museum some artifacts that have never left Greece as part of rotating collections. “If there is a will I’m sure we can find a solution,” the Greek premier said.
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