Part of the Parthenon Returned
"Today we honour the return of an architectural part of the Acropolis... It is a very symbolic return," Greek Culture Minister Michalis Liapis said. Greece in recent years has stepped up its campaign to recover ancient artefacts, and especially large sections of the decorative frieze removed from the Parthenon in 1801 by Lord Elgin, the then-British ambassador to the Ottoman empire.
This marble fragment, returned on December 2nd, from a frieze decorating the Parthenon temple which an Austrian soldier removed during World War Two, but renewed a call for all its stolen treasures to be returned. Martha Dahlgren inherited the piece, broken from the frieze adorning the Parthenon's inner colonnade, from her grandfather and decided to return it to Greece.
An inscription on the fragment, measuring 7-by-30cm, 2.8 by 12 inches, says it was taken from the Acropolis in Athens on February 16th, 1943 - in the midst of the three-year occupation of Greece by the Axis powers, led by Germany.