Keeping Elgin Marbles in UK is like slicing the Mona Lisa in half, Greek PM says

Keeping the Elgin Marbles within the UK is like slicing the Mona Lisa in half, the Greek Prime Minister has stated.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated he would problem Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer over the two,500-year-old artefacts on a go to to the UK tomorrow. The sculptures, taken from the Parthenon temple in Athens by British diplomat Lord Elgin within the nineteenth Century, are the topic of decades-long possession dispute with Greece.

Mr Mitsotakis informed the BBC it was clear the treasures needs to be “in the Acropolis Museum, a state-of-the-art museum that was built for that purpose.” He stated: “This is not in my mind an ownership question, this is a reunification argument, where can you best appreciate what is essentially one monument?

“I mean, it’s as if I told you that you would cut the Mona Lisa in half, and you will have half of it at the Louvre and half of it at the British Museum, do you think your viewers would appreciate the beauty of the painting in such a way? Well, this is exactly what happened with the Parthenon sculptures and that is why we keep lobbying for a deal that would essentially be a partnership between Greece and the British Museum but would allow us to return the sculptures to Greece and have people appreciate them in their original setting.”

George Osborne, chairman of the British Museum, is exploring methods for the Elgin Marbles to be displayed in Greece, with hypothesis there might be a mortgage deal. Mr Starmer, who represents Holborn & St Pancras, which incorporates the British Museum, will inform Mr Mitsotakis that Labour is not going to change the regulation however it’s open to a mortgage deal.

In March, the Prime Minister insisted there have been no plans to alter the 1963 British Museum Act, which prevents the establishment making a gift of objects besides in very restricted circumstances.