Why are the Parthenon Marbles in London? Lord Elgin, the British Museum and Greece's claim

You'll see them called the Elgin Marbles, the Parthenon Marbles or the Parthenon Sculptures; that last name is the one both museums use. We're not taking sides here. We'll tell you what happened and what each side says.

What are the Parthenon Marbles?

They're the carved decoration of the great temple of Athena, cut from marble from Mount Pentelicus in the mid-fifth century BC. There were three parts. In the pediments, the triangles under the roof, around fifty statues told the story of Athena's birth and her contest with Poseidon. On the metopes, ninety-two square panels above the columns, there were mythical battles. And the frieze, a continuous band of relief running round the temple, showed the great procession of Athena's festival, with hundreds of human and divine figures and more than two hundred animals, most of them horses.

By the time Elgin arrived, the temple had already been a wreck for over a century. That's the subject of another of our stories: Why is the Parthenon in ruins?. After the explosion of 1687, plenty of European visitors to the Acropolis went home with a fallen fragment or two.

When and how did the marbles leave Athens?

By the early 1800s the Ottomans had governed Athens for around 350 years. Elgin asked the authorities for leave to draw and measure the sculptures, and to remove figures too. He got it in the form of a firman, an official decree. According to the British Museum, his men worked between 1801 and 1805, under the oversight of the relevant authorities. Greek sources give shorter dates: the Ministry of Culture says 1801 to 1802, and the Acropolis Museum 1801 to 1804.

The method was expedient. The frieze blocks are almost a metre high and can weigh two tonnes or more, far too heavy to move whole. So, according to the Acropolis Museum, the workmen sawed off or levered away just the front face, the one with the relief. Athens still has the back of one of those blocks, from the south frieze, left behind when its carved face sailed for Britain. Put the two together, and they'd fit.

There was a witness with plenty to say: the British traveller Edward Dodwell, an outspoken opponent of the whole operation. He wrote that the Athenians, and even the Turks themselves, lamented what they saw and "loudly and openly blamed their sovereign for the permission he had granted", and that the work was so unpopular the labourers had to be paid more than usual before they'd agree to it. Dodwell conceded that British art would gain from the pieces, but he thought it would have been enough to take what had already fallen and make casts of the rest.

What exactly did Lord Elgin take?

According to the British Museum, London holds 15 metopes, 17 figures from the pediments and 75 metres of the frieze. Elgin was also allowed to remove sculptural and architectural pieces from elsewhere on the Acropolis: the Erechtheion, the Temple of Athena Nike and the Propylaia.

How what survives is shared out is told in two ways. The British Museum says around half the original decoration is lost and that, of what's left, London and Athens hold about half each. The Acropolis Museum breaks it down differently: 45 per cent in Athens, 5 per cent scattered round European museums and 50 per cent in the British Museum. According to the London museum, there are also fragments in Paris, Copenhagen, Munich, Vienna and Würzburg.

How did the marbles end up in the British Museum?

Elgin's entire collection of antiquities made its way to Britain. There, in 1816, a Parliamentary Select Committee investigated how it had been obtained and found it to be entirely legal. The sculptures then entered the British Museum's collection by Act of Parliament. Greece's Ministry of Culture sums it up in its own way: Elgin looted much of the temple's sculpture and sold it to the museum.

What does each side say?

The British Museum maintains that Elgin acted with permission and that the 1816 committee found the operation legal. It adds that the Parthenon can't be fully reconstructed or reunited with its decoration, because half of it has been lost, and that the surviving sculptures are "best seen and conserved in museums". According to the museum, Greece's first formal request for the permanent return of all the sculptures came in 1983, and successive Greek governments have refused to recognise the museum's Trustees as their rightful owners.

The Greek state calls it looting. Its Ministry of Culture says Elgin did the Parthenon serious damage, on top of the damage of 1687. For the Acropolis Museum, bringing the sculptures back together where they were made has been a standing request ever since the Greek state was founded: that way, it says, the mutilated temple would be whole again, and everything could be seen together, within sight of the rock it was carved for.

Both positions are set out here as their supporters put them. The state of any talks keeps changing, which is why we leave it out.

The gallery that faces the temple

In Athens, the missing half shows even in the architecture. The Acropolis Museum's Parthenon Gallery, the glass floor at the top, has the shape, the orientation and roughly the dimensions of the temple, and it's turned about 23 degrees from the rest of the building to line up with it. Inside, the frieze is set out in its original order, with the genuine reliefs and, in the gaps, plaster casts of the pieces held in London and in other museums. Take the largest block of the frieze, on the east side: all Athens has of it is the head of the goddess Iris; the rest is a cast of the original that London keeps.

Fact or legend.

• Fact: Elgin's men removed sculptures from the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis in the early nineteenth century, with an Ottoman firman. The dates vary by source: 1801–1805 (British Museum), 1801–1804 (Acropolis Museum), 1801–1802 (Greek Ministry of Culture).
• Fact: in 1816 a British Parliamentary Select Committee found the operation legal, and the sculptures entered the British Museum by Act of Parliament.
• Attributed positions: a lawful removal, according to the British Museum; looting that badly damaged the temple, according to the Greek Ministry of Culture.
• Figures that don't match: half in London and half in Athens, according to the British Museum; 50 per cent in London, 45 per cent in Athens and 5 per cent elsewhere, according to the Acropolis Museum.
• A witness with his own view: Edward Dodwell, who saw the removals and opposed them.

Where to hear it

Podtour tells this story on Athens' free route, Around the Acropolis: twelve stops round the rock, without going into the site. The second, "The Angled Gallery and the Other Half", is heard on the walkway beside the Acropolis Museum and gives both versions a voice. The 1687 explosion comes near the end, at the stop "Church, Mosque, Gunpowder Store: 1687". For the practical side of your trip, see our Athens guide.

Further reading

• British Museum, "The Parthenon Sculptures", contested objects from the collection. https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-story/contested-objects-collection/parthenon-sculptures
• Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports; Ioanna Venieri, "Parthenon" and "Acropolis of Athens — History", Odysseus portal. http://odysseus.culture.gr/h/2/eh251.jsp?obj_id=912
• Acropolis Museum, The Parthenon sculptures: 6 short stories of separation (Athens, 2022). https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/sites/default/files/2022-09/The%20Parthenon%20Sculptures%206%20short%20stories%20of%20separation.pdf
• Edward Dodwell, A Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece, vol. I (London, 1819), pp. 322–324. https://archive.org/details/classicaltopogra01dodw
• Arquitectura Viva, "New Acropolis Museum — Bernard Tschumi". https://arquitecturaviva.com/works/new-acropolis-museum