June 20 in Athens, the inauguration of the new Acropolis Museum. It is situated only 300 meters from the famous architectural monuments of ancient Athens. Construction of new building and equipment cost 130 million euros.

Museum Director Dimitris Pandermalis (Dimitrios Pandermalis) said: «The new Acropolis museum has been designed to solve two problems: first, to ensure that the best way to present exhibits, and secondly, to ensure to receive visitors in their rooms. Walking through the museum's exhibition galleries - this is a walk on the outskirts of ancient Athens, through the very history of the works of Archaic period to the high classical masterpieces. The new museum provides many opportunities for recreation, as well as an excellent exhibition space for the most famous works of antiquity ».

Over the past century, the unique monuments of the Acropolis to pass a lot of damage. They are well experienced and ancient times and Middle Ages: up to the XVII century, travelers from other countries reported that they saw the classical buildings almost intact. However, in the 1656 explosion were damaged propylene, used as a powder magazine, but after thirty years of the Turkish occupied the Acropolis, Temple of Nike pulled Apteros to use the marble blocks to strengthen the bastion. The most significant damage was caused in 1687, the explosion of a shell the Venetian army, was besieged by the Acropolis, the Parthenon was destroyed.

But the misfortune beautiful monument is not finished. At the beginning of XIX century, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Lord James Bruce Eldzhin (James Bruce Elgin) moved to England a lot of sculptures and reliefs decorating the frieze, and pediment metope ancient temple. Dispute over these works, which are now stored in the British Museum, continue to this day.

The construction of the museum, which could place the artifacts found on the Acropolis, emerged immediately after Greece's independence in 1830. In 1863 it was decided to create a new museum on the compound, and 30 Dec, 1865 was laid its foundation. The area of the building was 800 square meters, and very soon it became clear that this is not enough space to accommodate the many archaeological finds. Therefore, in 1888 it was announced that the construction of a second, so called. Small museum. It existed until the years 1946-1947, then was demolished, but due to liberated area has expanded the area of the first museum. But after that the final reconstruction do not solve the problem. By 1970-s of the museum could no longer cope with the enormous flow of visitors who pass through the halls. Therefore, in 1976, was declared the first architectural competition. That was followed by two more - in 1979 and 1989. From the project, winning the third contest was abandoned because of the archaeological finds made at the construction site of the future. Now, the architect had to take account of the ancient settlement which lasted until the early Christian period. For this task successfully Swiss-American architect Bernard Chumi (Bernard Tschumi) and his Greek co-author Michael Fotiadis (Michael Photiadis), won the last contest, launched in 2000.

Construction of the new Acropolis Museum was completed in 2007. It has an area of 25 thousand square meters, of which, under the exhibition halls set aside 14 thousand, which is 10 times higher than in the old museum. This is a museum of the XXI century.

Material prepared Onuchin Catherine, AI

Sources: artdaily.com , theacropolismuseum.gr , artinvestment.ru