At the Met, the glories of Greece and Rome are back in inspired surroundings.

WE’RE taught that the Greeks and Romans provided the pillars of our civilization, inspiring our government, architecture and more. Not everyone, though, has been a fan of their art -- and put Francis Taylor, who became head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1940, on that list.

He’s the one who sent half of the classical works in the nation’s leading museum into storage so its Great Roman Court could become ... a restaurant. It was an elegant eatery, complete with maitre d’ and a pool decorated with sculptures identified as “muses” -- nevermind that they were not the arts-inspiring goddesses and nymphs of mythology, but winged boys. And why not have society decorator Dorothy Draper design the place, even if her taste was more Art Deco than ancient anything and that she repainted the miniature lions that served as downspouts -- in what was supposed to resemble the atrium of a Roman villa -- from white to pink?

“This is their perception of the ancient world -- blond, blue-eyed lions!” exclaimed Carlos A. Picon, who is finally able to laugh about those bleak days when the restaurant replaced the Roman busts and its kitchen took over the gallery for Etruscan art and its restrooms evicted the Treasury, which displayed ancient coins and gold pieces.

“The restrooms are gone,” said the curator in charge of the Met’s Department of Greek and Roman Art and the overseer of the $220-million project that has again given the museum a fitting space to display classical art.

At the moment, he was back in what had been those bathrooms, in front of a glass case full of portrait coins such as one showing Demetrius I of Bactria, part of present-day Afghanistan, in an exotic elephant headdress, putting to shame any coin turned out by mints today. The Treasury is back, a short stroll away from where the onetime restaurant has been transformed into the centerpiece of the restoration -- a glass-topped, two-story courtyard in which natural light shines down on a marble statues of Dionysus, an armless Aphrodite and two enormous Hercules that had been stashed away all these decades in the basement, gathering dust.

Now schoolchildren, tourists, retirees and workers on midday breaks were surrounding such statues, as the new galleries have been outdrawing even the museum’s Impressionist paintings and Rembrandts since the final phase of the remodeled wing opened last month, a bright piece of news in an antiquities world rocked by scandals in recent years amid complaints of grave robbing and bids to repatriate prized pieces from museums such as this one and the Getty.

“Over 7,000 people a day,” said Picon, nodding toward a museum staffer keeping count on a hand clicker as each new arrival passed the massive column from the temple at Sardis, including, anonymous in the throng, a TV star known to show almost as much flesh as the statue of Venus.

Antiquity with a practical past

THOMAS HOVING, who headed the Met from 1967 to 1977, could have been a stand-up comic in another life and he’s ready with a routine on classical art, quipping about how all those Grecian pots look alike, with their scenes of satyrs chasing nymphs, and how “if you put more than three in a room, 99% of the people will go elsewhere.” And would people really want to see those elaborately carved sarcophagi if they understood how they worked? “It means ‘eat flesh,’ ” Hoving elaborates. “They would put the corpse inside the limestone thing and two weeks later there was nothing ... So you’re looking at something disgusting.”

Of course, one of his prized acquisitions was a classical work, a Greek pot no less -- the Euphronios bell krater, a bowl used to mix wine and water, purchased for $1 million in 1972. It shows twin brothers representing sleep and death transporting the body of Sarpedon, the son of Zeus, off the battlefield. What astonished Hoving was how Euphronios had to draw hundreds of lines on wet terracotta without seeing the figures or colors emerge until the vase was fired, “but he didn’t miss a single of the 2,000 overlaps.”

And for all his talk about how the average citizen goes to Greek and Roman galleries last, Hoving included in his master plan a proposal to restore those areas closer to the spirit of the original architects, McKim, Mead & White, who believed that such art needed a unique space. But “nobody said ‘Here’s $20 million to get this rolling,’ ” he recalled, and there were other ambitions, such as raising funds for the American wing or finding a way to display its musical instruments.

It thus was left to his successor, Philippe de Montebello, to do something about this “absolutely appalling” corner of the museum that draws 5 million visitors a year. Not only had the skylighted atrium become a restaurant, the long room that became the main classical gallery doubled as a passageway between the Met’s garage and the Great Hall off the Fifth Avenue entrance. “Yeah, it was a hell of a wide corridor,” De Montebello said. “It was installed poorly with everything shoved against the wall, which is what made it look like a corridor. It invited speed rather than deterring the visitor in his steps.... For decades the installation was stultifying.”

But De Montebello believed that this art still could connect with visitors if shown correctly. “It’s portraits, it’s the human figure,” he noted. “It’s not abstract. It’s the birth of humanism. And ... they’ve all read about Caesar and Rome.” Plus you didn’t have to know about Aphrodite to appreciate “beautiful naked women in marble.”

In 1988, he set in motion the plan to create, in essence, a “museum within the museum,” enlisted architect Kevin Roche and obtained a key funding pledge from Oppenheimer & Co. investment whiz Leon Levy and his wife, Shelby White, after whom the central sculpture court would be named. Picon and other curators then showed him the thousands of pieces in storage, telling him “this needs conservation ... this is a fake ... this is too damaged.” But also there were the two towering Hercules from the 1st century, one depicting the mythical strongman in his youth, the other as older and bearded, albeit without arms. Getting them back before the public, more than half a century after such works were evicted for the restaurant, “is one of the most glorious moments of my tenure here,” he said.

Suffering certain indignities

PICON loves telling the story of the first piece ever donated to the Met. It’s a marble sarcophagus -- yes, one of those flesh eaters -- dug up in Turkey in 1863 and pulled to port by 16 buffalo, then shipped off by Abdullah Debbas, who worked as the American vice-counsel there and “wanted to give it to the New World,” which is how it ended up at the fledgling Met in 1870.

But by the time the sculpture atrium was being turned into an eatery, the sarcophagus also had a new use: its backside was converted into a donation box.

Decorated with oak leaves, Medusa heads and Cupids, the piece sat -- until two years ago -- just inside the museum entrance, “right by the plaque that says ‘J.P. Morgan, benefactor, president of the trustees, good boy blah, blah, blah,’ ” Picon added. “I would get every couple of months a phone call from someone in the public saying, ‘Is that Mr. Morgan buried there?’ ”

“I’d say, ‘No, he has a more elaborate final resting place.’ ”

Today, the piece is free of decades of grime -- all it took was soap and water -- and placed in its historical context in the Roman Imperial gallery. Picon winds from there back into the two-story main court to show off two marble portraits of the Roman emperor Lucius Verus, one on loan from the Louvre.

The ownership of antiquities is a highly sensitive issue these days. Indeed, the Met’s Euphronios krater is due to be returned to Italy next year because of allegations that it was illegally taken from a tomb and the benefactor White is negotiating the return of some of the pieces she collected with her late husband. But few objects have a clearer lineage than the rendering of the bearded emperor.

“It comes from Lucius Verus’ own house outside Rome,” Picon said. “And it was bought from the Borghese collection by Napoleon. Look at the side here, unbelievable!” On the right side of the marble head is a red-stamped N.R., “Napoleon Roi!” Picon says. “It doesn’t get better than this.”

To him, the repatriation mania became absurd when the mayor of Monteleone, population 653, asked for the return of the star piece in the upstairs Etruscan gallery, an ornate 6th century BC chariot salvaged from a grave and bought above board by the museum in 1903. “Give me a break,” said Picon, who has been the chief Greek and Roman curator here since 1990.

Met officials, whose next expansion project includes galleries for Oceanic and Native American art, due to open in the fall, figure they’ve bought themselves two years during which the novelty factor alone will bring crowds to the redone Greek and Roman space. After that, the works will have to be the draw, whether it’s the astonishing fresco-walled room salvaged from the ruins of Pompeii or the chariot they have no intent of giving back.

Passing by the chariot, which has undergone a five-year restoration, was a global history class from Albany’s Shaker High School. The teacher, Lauren Palmateer, had given the students a printout with photos of objects to search for, making the field trip a treasure hunt of sorts. Another recent visitor was Hoving. Now 76, he still believes there’s no substitute for seeing these objects in their home setting, whether it’s the Parthenon under a full moon or participating in a dig in Sicily. But after seeing what his successors had achieved, Hoving said, he called architect Roche, who is 85. “And I said, ‘You’ve done it brilliantly ... but why are all those freaking statues in it?’ ”

Yet on this afternoon, those statues clearly had the attention of the Albany teenagers and a throng of other tourists, so much so that none noticed another visitor -- Kim Cattrall. The “Sex and the City” actress was taking in “The Three Graces,” a trio of lithe girls representing beauty, mirth and abundance.

paul.lieberman@latimes.com

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Curator Carlos A. Picon will be lecturing on the Met’s new galleries at 3 p.m. June 9 at the Getty Villa.