Greek president demands UK return Parthenon marbles from British Museum’s 'murky prison'

Greece's president has called for the UK to return the Parthenon marbles from the British Museum so they can be displayed in Athens.

Greece's President Prokopis Pavlopoulos has called for the UK to return the Parthenon marbles from the British Museum. Source: Press Association

Greece's president has called for Britain to free the Parthenon marbles from the "murky prison" of its national museum, upping the rhetoric in a near 200-year-old campaign for the sculptures' return.

President Prokopis Pavlopoulos spoke at Athens' own glass-fronted Acropolis Museum, which campaigners hope will one day house the classical reliefs and figures taken by a British diplomat in the early nineteenth century.

Parthenon Marbles, also known as the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum. Greece is calling for the return of the priceless antiquities. Source: Press Association

"Let the British Museum come here and make the comparison between this (Acropolis) museum of light and the murky, if I may say, prison of the British Museum where the Parthenon Marbles are held as trophies," Pavlopoulos said on Monday.

There was no immediate response from the British Museum.

Britain's Lord Elgin removed the 2500-year-old sculptures from the Acropolis temple in Athens during a period when Greece was under Ottoman rule.

Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos has called for the return of the relics. Source: SIPA USA

They have been placed in a gallery inside the British Museum in London, lit by a long skylight.

Greece has repeatedly requested their return since its independence in 1832, and stepped up its campaign in 2009 when it opened its new museum at the foot of the Acropolis hill.

That building holds the sculptures that Elgin left behind alongside plaster casts of the missing pieces, lit by the sun coming through a glass wall looking over the original site.

"This museum can host the Marbles," Pavlopoulos said. "We are fighting a holy battle for a monument which is unique."

The British Museum has refused to return the sculptures, saying they were acquired by Elgin under a legal contract with the Ottoman empire.

Britain's Lord Elgin removed the 2500-year-old sculptures from the Acropolis temple in Athens during a period when Greece was under Ottoman rule. Source: Press Association

The museum and other British institutions have also resisted other repatriation campaigns citing legislation preventing them from breaking up collections and arguing that they can preserve items and present them to an international audience.