I was cancelled by Greece for telling the truth about the Elgin Marbles

First published in The Telegraph on 21 May 2026. The text below is the author’s submitted version; the published version may differ slightly after editing.

Andrew Doyle once wrote that “whereas democracy is founded on the negotiation of diverging viewpoints, ideology is sustained through intolerance of dissent.” It is therefore especially poignant that the latest attempt to quell my particular dissent should have taken place in the city so often called “the cradle of democracy”.

I am just a classical archaeologist who devoted many years to studying Greece and ancient Greek culture. I also lived in Athens for four years, enjoying the warmth of both its weather and its people. Yet, in their eyes, I am guilty of one of the worst possible crimes: I don’t believe the Elgin Marbles should go back.

It all started in 2021, when the archaeological museum of my hometown of Palermo, in Sicily, decided to bypass the entire legal framework upon which heritage preservation in Italy is founded, and to send to the Acropolis Museum in Athens a small fragment of the frieze of the Parthenon, which had been part of the Sicilian collection for almost 200 years. The piece had been loaned to Greece before, but always came back. This time, they called it a “deposit”, the intention being to keep it there forever. It is illegal, but it “looks good” on camera.

At that time, I wrote a few pieces opposing the move on the basis that, for the historian and the archaeologist, the history that brought that fragment to Palermo was just as important as the history of the Parthenon’s creation, and that you cannot sacrifice one for the other. This immediately drew some attention: how can an archaeologist oppose the reintegration of a fragment in the monument it came from? How dare he challenge the supreme dogma of cultural repatriation? I was an oddity, a white fly.

For the past 5 years, I have been campaigning against the Greek claim to the Marbles in particular and against the emotional repatriation of legitimately acquired artefacts, often effected as the result of mob pressure. The Greek claim doesn’t stand a chance because they keep saying that Lord Elgin “stole” the sculptures. Let’s contemplate for a moment the absurdity of claiming that a British aristocrat waltzed into a military base (such was the Acropolis of Athens in 1801) with hundreds of labourers, taking away all he fancied, packing and shipping it for months on end under the eyes of the Ottoman garrison, all without official permission. Ludicrous, right? On top of that, let’s now consider that we actually do have a translated copy of his permission and contemporary witnesses corroborate his story, including none other than Elgin’s smearer-in-chief, Lord Byron. The Greeks want none of that.

Things have grown heated in this debate since actress-turned-politician Melina Mercouri was appointed minister of culture in Greece's socialist government of 1981. A passionate politician and a skilled media-whisperer, she transformed a recurring theme of cultural diplomacy into a crusade. Now, 99.9% of the Greeks consider the repatriation of the Elgin Marbles a matter of national importance, and the Minister of Culture, a second-rank position in the government of every other country, has since then become one of the most powerful voices in the cabinet.

But the issue here is that, regardless of Melina’s rhetoric and tearful displays of attachment, the Marbles are legally owned by the British Museum, and their title is unimpeachable. The sculptures were the surviving parts of a crumbling building inside a military base, at all effects public property under the jurisdiction of the Grand Vizier, who was the commander-in-chief of the Sultan’s armies. Athens was a minor centre in a province of the vast Ottoman Empire, fully integrated into its administrative and legal framework, just like Ankara or Aleppo. They had every right to give Elgin what he asked for, and they did, for their own political reasons and gain. Two centuries later, when another absolute monarch, Pope Francis, decided to take three pieces of the Parthenon decoration from the Vatican collection to gift them to the Archbishop of Athens as a friendly gesture, the Greeks had nothing to object. But if it is the Sultan giving pieces of the Parthenon to Lord Elgin, it is unacceptable. It was another time, you might say, but the reality is that the Archbishop’s predecessors were not so different, giving antiquities to Elgin’s father-in-law as a welcoming gift, or selling them to Elgin for coin.

The way we see the Parthenon today is largely a Romantic invention, a myth forged in the European capitals of antiquarian knowledge, from Edinburgh to Munich, also thanks to the removal of the Elgin Marbles to London. The Parthenon was a local building (probably not even a temple), in a local sanctuary, erected with money appropriated from allies by a ruthless empire. It is routinely presented as a symbol of democracy, yet a closer historical parallel would be President Trump using the NATO budget to build his White House ballroom. The ancient literary sources barely mention it, leaving us in doubt about many of its details. All the symbolic value attached to it is a nationalist construction created by German scholars at the time of the creation (with British help) of the Kingdom of the Hellenes in 1833. The cultural vandalism of demolishing everything that stands in the way of the myth, both materially and metaphorically, starts there. All nuance, all historical detail, all considerations of cultural context are sacrificed on the altar of the patriotic symbol that needs to be rebuilt so that the homeland can feel whole. Even if this is no longer possible because one third of the pieces are lost and the remaining ones are never going back on the temple on the Acropolis.

This is what I try to explain to those kind enough to listen. And this is the historically documented story I expect scientific institutions to tell their visitors, in London as well as in Athens. Not political leaflets. And that is why my recent cancellation by the Acropolis Museum is particularly significant. They pride themselves on being a world-class institution, a centre of excellence in academic research as well as in curatorial standards. But high-tech facilities and lavish budgets cannot make up for the shocking lies about Elgin and Britain that are served to thousands of unsuspecting visitors daily, spoonfeeding them ideological propaganda so they can return to their countries and put pressure on cultural institutions to “do the right thing”, going against the very things they are supposed to protect: history and culture. I just cannot stand it. And that’s why, cancellations or not, I go on.