Three fragments of the Parthenon returned to Greece thanks to Pope Francis. The Pope has in fact decided to bring home the 3 archaeological finds that are on display there Vatican Museums. It consists of a horse’s head, taken from the west pediment of the temple, a boy’s head, and a bearded man’s head, believed to be from the depiction of the centaurs fighting the Lapiths. They came to the Vatican in the 19th century when they were merged into the collections of Gregorian Profane Museum, commissioned by Pope Gregory XVI. According to what was announced by the press office of the Holy See«The Holy Father Francis has decided to donate to His Beatitude Jerome IIArchbishop of Athens and from everyone Greecethe three fragments of the Parthenon, carefully preserved for centuries in the Pontifical Collections and in the Vatican Museums”, as a concrete sign of “the sincere desire to continue the ecumenical journey of witness to the truth”.
The quarrel with London
A free initiative welcomed with satisfaction by the Greek Ministry of Culture, which took the opportunity to thank the “spiritual and kind gesture of the Pope” and insist on the aim of obtaining the return of other artifacts from the Parthenon that are still being held London. The gesture, he continued in an official statement, “complies with the diligent efforts of the Greek government and Prime Minister Kyriacus Mitsotakis personally since July 2019 for the return of the Parthenon sculptures British Museum and their reunion with those exposed in Acropolis Museum».
The third of the three fragments of the Parthenon, a gift from the Pope to His Beatitude Ieronymus II, Archbishop of Athens and All Greece
The English Museum actually preserves many sculptures belonging to a frieze that ran along the outside of the temple Phidias. They arrived in the British capital in the early 19th century, having been seized by a British diplomat after the Parthenon was bombed some two hundred years earlier. A historical legacy that Greece claims from the United Kingdom and that has persisted with increasing intensity since its completion 2009 the Acropolis Museum at the foot of the Parthenon.
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