Swede gives back Acropolis marble

By Malcolm Brabant
BBC News, Athens

The marble was picked up by Wiger-Angner's great-uncle in 1896

A retired Swedish gym teacher is the toast of Greece after returning a piece of sculpted marble taken from the Acropolis more than a century ago.

Birgit Wiger-Angner's family held the marble for 110 years, but she decided to return it to Athens after hearing about Greece's Elgin marbles campaign.

The small fragment comes from the Acropolis's Erechtheion temple.

The move has boosted the international campaign to persuade the British Museum to return the Elgin marbles to Athens.

London's reluctance

It is only a small decorative piece of marble but it is highly symbolic.

The fragment comes from the frieze of the Erechtheion, one of the ancient buildings on top of the rock called the Acropolis.

The British Museum wants to keep its Parthenon marbles

Surrounded by the original Parthenon marbles in the Acropolis Museum, Mrs Wiger-Angner called on the British Museum in London to restore to Greece the missing sculptures from this priceless collection.

"I think that all people in the British Museum should also bring back all the originals. They can make copies belonging to themselves," she said.

This is the second piece of the Acropolis jigsaw to be returned in the past two months.

In September, Heidelberg University handed back a marble heel from the Acropolis' Parthenon.

Campaigners argue that tourists would much rather see the marbles in the original location than in London.

"I think it is really just a moral obligation to add and share in the reunification of the Parthenon marbles which is a world monument," said Eleni Korka, director of classical antiquities at the Greek ministry of culture.

But the British Museum is resisting growing international pressure to return the sculptures prised from the ancient Greek temple by Lord Elgin.

It insists that the sculptures were legally obtained from the authority governing Greece.

It does not seem troubled by the fact that the nationality of that authority was Turkish, because until the mid-19th Century, Greece was occupied by the Ottoman empire.