Pireaus is actually a little suburb/port city of Athens. So as a special treat to you took us to the new 2009 Museum of the Acropolis. This is one of the most interesting museums, architecturally, that I have ever seen. Because this is Greece and you can't do anything without finding remnants of an ancient civilization. They chose to build this museum on pillars so that they could leave whatever archaeological findings were below it available for people to work on. So the museum is built on piers and you can see what they have. This museum was mostly the vision of the Greek actress Melina Mercouri Who was the Minister of culture in Greece in the 60s. She wanted more than anything to get the Elgin marbles that from the British Museum. They refused,saying Greece did not have a good place for them to be displayed that would preserve them. Of course it took forever to get this going but it's a beautiful museum and it's organized so that the museum itself is as if you were walking up to the Acropolis. And then all around in the same size as the Acropolis they have the pieces that were around it and then they have plastercastings of the ones that are in the British Museum. They also have a lot of other more recent discoveries. But you aren't allowed to take pictures of them because the museum has never printed a catalog. While we were on this little tour our guide's mother came to meet us at the museum. She has the same sparkling personality and brought us cookies, too.




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