Moving antiquities is a real art
A practice run for what will be the biggest antiquities removal project in modern Greek history -- moving some 4,500 ancient masterpieces into the new Acropolis Museum -- went successfully Thursday, officials said.
The real nail-biting will be on Sunday, when cranes begin shifting the first of the antiquities -- which are insured for $566 million -- from the ancient citadel to the new museum some 400 yards away, an operation that will take at least six weeks.
On Thursday, movers in massive cranes shifted a 3-ton block of unworked marble off the Acropolis, past the 5th century BC Theater of Dionysos and into the new glass and concrete museum. The meticulously choreographed operation took 2 1/2 hours.
“It all went well,” said supervising engineer Costas Zambas. “If we had put a cup of coffee on top of the crate, not a drop would have been spilled.”
On Sunday, Zambas’ crew will move a 2.3-ton marble block from the Parthenon frieze, a 2,500-year-old sculpted strip depicting a religious procession that ran around the ancient temple just below roof level. Sculptures weighing up to 2.5 tons and mostly dating from the 6th and 5th centuries BC will be packed into Styrofoam-filled boxes made of plywood and metal.
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