A former boss of the British Museum has called for the disputed Elgin Marbles to be shared with Greece and said foreign visitors should be charged entry to the London attraction. Sir Mark Jones led the institution as the interim director following the furore over thefts from its collection in 2023. He told the Sunday Times that “some of the buildings are in a poor state” and sometimes during heavy rain there are leaks in galleries.
Sir Mark Jones outside the British Museum (Aaron Chown/PA) “That’s expensive. At the moment, that work is entirely funded by private philanthropy, but in the long run, it would make more sense to use some of the funding that would come in from charging overseas visitors to create a better-funded system of global partnerships. “If we were ever to find a way to create a partnership with the Greeks over the Parthenon Marbles, we would need to find a way to fund it.
” The marble statues came from friezes on the 2,500-year-old Parthenon temple and have been displayed at the museum for more than 200 years since they were removed by Lord Elgin when he was British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century. Some of the temple statues are on display in the Acropolis Museum in Athens and Greece has long called for the collections to be reunited. Greece alleges the marbles were illegally acquired during a period of foreign occupation – which the UK Government and British Museum rejects.
The Parthenon Marbles in London’s British .
