Grant

Settled on a hill high above Athens, the Parthenon was the ancient city’s most important temple, decorated with marble statues and a sculpted frieze depicting a festival in honor of the goddess Athena and featuring heroes and gods in procession. Greece was under Ottoman control in the early 1800s when British ambassador and Earl of Elgin Thomas Bruce was granted permission to remove “some pieces of stone with old inscriptions, and figures.” Lord Elgin took about half the surviving sculptures and much of the frieze and shipped them to London. Greece has long demanded their return, arguing that Elgin’s deal with an occupying power was illegitimate.