Acropolis Museum

Established    2008
Location    Dionysiou Areopagitou Street
Athens, Greece

Type    Archaeological Museum
Collection size    4,250+ objects
Visitor figures    1 million (June-October 2009)[1]

Director    Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis

Website    www.theacropolismuseum.gr

The Acropolis Museum is an archaeological museum focused on the findings of the archaeological site of the Acropolis of Athens. The museum was built to house every artifact found on the rock and on its feet, from the Greek Bronze Age to Roman and Byzantine Greece. It also lies on the archaeological site of Makrygianni and the ruins of a part of Roman and early Byzantine Athens.
The museum was founded in 2003 while the Organisation of the Museum was established in 2008. It opened to the public on June 21, 2009. Nearly 4,000 objects are exhibited over an area of 14,000 square metres.The Organisation for the Construction of the new museum is chaired by Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Professor Emeritus of Archaeology, Dimitrios Pandermalis.



The archaeological site over which the new museum is built - the pink Weiler Building is seen top right, the two buildings scheduled for demolition are seen top left, with the Acropolis Rock barely visible behind them


Εarthworks in the archaeological site in Makrygianni, during the construction of the museum
The first museum was on the Acropolis, (see Old Acropolis Museum); it was completed in 1874 and underwent a moderate expansion in the 1950s. However, successive excavations on the Acropolis uncovered many new artifacts which significanly exceeded its original capacity.
An additional motivation for the construction of a new museum was that in the past, when Greece made requests for the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the United Kingdom, to which they had been carried away, it was suggested by some British officials that Greece had no suitable location where they could be displayed. Creation of a gallery for the display of the Parthenon Marbles has been key to all recent proposals for the design of a new museum.
Competitions for the new museum
The first architectural competition to design a new museum was held in 1976 and was limited to participants from Greece. Both the 1976 competition and one that followed it in 1979 failed to produce any results mainly because the plots of land selected for the proposed constructions were deemed unsuitable.
In 1989, a third competition for the design of the new Acropolis Museum was announced that would be international. A choice of three possible sites was provided. This competition was won by the Italian architects, Nicoletti and Passarelli. After delays throughout the 1990s, work on the construction of the museum based on this third design progressed to the stage of excavations for the foundations, but these were stopped due to apparently sensitive archaeological remains on the site, leading to annulment of the competition in 1999. In retrospect, the location of the new museum was rather straightforward: the large lot of the unused "Camp Makrygianni" gendarmerie barracks, opposite the Theater of Dionysus. The barracks were built on public land and a limited number of expropriations of surrounding private houses were needed to free up the necessary space. The main building of the old barracks, the neoclassical "Weiler Building", has been renovated and houses the Museum of the Center for the Acropolis Studies.


Entrance to the New Acropolis Museum
The fourth competition had made no provision for the preservation of the ancient site. These were met to a degree only after local and international (ICOMOS) campaigners exposed this oversight and it became the final competition. The new plans were adjusted so that the building was elevated above ground, on pillars. Competition was open only to architectural practices by invitation and it was won by New York–based architect, Bernard Tschumi, in collaboration with the Greek architect Michael Photiadis. Excavation has revealed two layers of modest, private roadside houses and workshops, one from the early Byzantine era and another from the classical era. Once the layout and stratigraphy of the findings were established, suitable locations for the foundation pillars were identified. These traverse the soil to the underlying bedrock and float on roller bearings able to withstand a Richter scale magnitude 10 earthquake.
As construction work neared completion, the operation to move the historic artifacts the 280-meter (310 yd) distance from the Acropolis rock to the new museum started in October 2007, took four months, and required the use of three tower cranes to move the sculptures across the distance without mishap. Greek officials expressed their hope that the new museum will help in the campaign for the return of the Parthenon Marbles.[2][3]
[edit] Location
The museum is located by the southeastern slope of the Acropolis hill, on the ancient road that led up to the "sacred rock" in classical times. Set only 280 meters (310 yd), as the crow flies, away from the Parthenon, and a mere 400 meters (440 yd) walking distance from it, the museum will be the largest modern building erected so close to the ancient site, although many other buildings from the last 150 years are located closer to the Acropolis. The entrance to the building is on Dionysiou Areopagitou Street and directly adjacent to the Akropoli station, line 2 of the Athens Metro.
[edit] The building
The design by Bernard Tschumi was selected as the winning project in the fourth competition. Tschumi's design revolves around three concepts: light, movement, and a tectonic and programmatic element. Together these characteristics "turn the constraints of the site into an architectural opportunity, offering a simple and precise museum" with the mathematical and conceptual clarity of ancient Greek buildings.
The collections of the museum are exhibited on three levels while a fourth middle level houses the auxiliary spaces such as the museum shop, the café and the offices. On the first level of the museum there are the findings of the slopes of the Acropolis. The long and rectangular hall whose floor is sloping, resembles the ascension to the rock. Then, the visitor is found at the large trapezoidal hall which accommodates the archaic findings. On the same floor there are also the artifacts and sculptures from the other Acropolis buildings such as the Erechtheum, the Temple of Athena Nike and the Propylaea and findings from Roman and early Christian Athens. However the visitor is intended to see the latter during descent so as to keep the chronological order because he will first be directed to the last level of Parthenon marbles. The Parthenon hall has the same orientation with the temple on the Acropolis and the use of glass allows the natural light to enter.
As the museum is built over an extensive archaeological site, the floor, outside and inside, is often transparent using glass and thus the visitor can see the excavations below. The museum also provides an amphitheatre, a virtual theatre and a hall for temporary exhibitions.

Acropolis Museum commemorative coin.
A controversy erupted over the plans of the new museum and whether it was appropriate to build it on the archaeological site in Makrygianni. Another concern was whether a large modern building would fit well into the landscape.[4]
In 2007, another controversy erupted over the proposed demolition of two historic buildings. These are in front of the museum, numbers 17 and 19, Dionysiou Areopagitou Street,[5] facing the Acropolis (see picture, left). Bernard Tschumi has been showing photographic images of the space in front of the museum edited to remove the two buildings and nearby four-story-tall trees. The Greek Government has had the two buildings de-listed historically although one is Neo-Classical[6] and the other an example of Art Deco architecture.[5][6] Protests against the proposed demolition came from international agencies such as INTBAU [5] and ICOMOS.[6]
At the centre of the controversy is the composer Vangelis Papathanassiou, who is the owner of the neo-classical house targeted for demolition. According to Greek officials the house obstructs the view to the ancient Theater of Dionysus, which is located on the southern slope of the Acropolis. Vangelis Papathanasiou claims that the real reason for the demolition plan to include his house is because it blocks the view from the museum restaurant, and he has accused the Greek government of “architectural terrorism”. The latest proposal with regard to the impasse is a planned salvage and transfer of the facades of these two buildings to adjacent, newer buildings; this will allow demolition while preserving the facades, albeit, out of context to their original locations.
Other information
•    The entrance fee to the museum will be €1 for the first year and €5 thereafter.
•    The excavation below ground level continues. The site and process are visible through the ground level glass flooring. The site will be available for visitation once the excavation is complete.
•    The Acropolis Museum recently was selected as the motif for a commemorative Euro coin edition: the €10 Greek Acropolis Museum commemorative coin, minted in 2008 to mark the relocation of the museum. On the obverse is a panoramic view of the Acropolis and the new museum lies at the base.
•    In the first two months since the museum opened, it was visited by 523,540 people (an average of 9,200 a day). Of these, 60 percent were foreign visitors. During the same two-month period, 409,000 hits by unique visitors from 180 countries were recorded by the museum’s website.[7]

•    Museum of the Center for the Acropolis Studies, located in the adjacent Wilhelm von Weiler Building.
•    Old Acropolis Museum, now closed and scheduled to house workshops for the ongoing Acropolis Restoration Project.