Athens treasures to miss Olympic deadline

[SoCalDem]

http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1138518.htm


Athens treasures to miss Olympic deadline
Daniel Howden
Reuters
Wednesday, 23 June 2004



Visitors to the Athens Olympics will see scaffolding and fireworks at the Parthenon (Image: Reuters)
Visitors to the Athens Olympics in August who want to see classical treasures such as the northern colonnade of the Parthenon will have to make do with buying postcards instead.

Construction workers stalk the dusty halls of some of the city's finest museums while priceless sections of the Acropolis have been dismantled and taken to the cleaners. Seven years after Greece won its bid to bring the Games back to their birthplace, the country's cultural venues are proving even more difficult to get ready than their sporting counterparts.

Culture ministry officials, who had hoped to have the city's landmark, the Acropolis, looking its best by August, have conceded that scaffolding will be obscuring the view when Olympic tourists arrive. "It's a disgrace," said Jeffrey Carson, a US art historian and classical scholar who lives in Greece. "The Acropolis has been deconstructed and it's inconceivable that it will be put back exactly as it was," he said. "This was built by the greatest architect the world has known."


snip....

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athens will have to cut corners :)

[Scooter24]

1. Argh...

Everytime I read something about how Athens won't be ready, I wonder why the IOC didn't resort to a backup.

[theboss]

2. I got news for you . . . .

The venues themselves ain't gonna be ready.

[SoCalDem]

3. I have a feeling that the "Grecians" are going to lose a lot of money

on this event.. They are not ready, people do not seem "interested" in the Olympics this time around, there are althlete scandals brewing, and I would bet money that people will not be going this time around..

I really think that the whole Olympic ideal has been corrupted (as most things have) and after the 1972 fiasco, it's been in a steady decline.. Maybe it's outlived its usefulness.

The whole idea of athletes with no political axe to grind, coming together in friendship and "playful" competition, is never coming back.:(