Elgin Marbles: What are they and why are they causing a diplomatic row? 

They are not Elgin's They are not marbles They are the Parthenon Sculptures

There is no reason that the Elgin marbles cannot be copied by the experts at the British Museum and the original marbles returned to Greece.

It’s like having stone henge in Greece….give them back to where they stood for 2ooo years and respect history

Anything stolen then found to be so must be returned to the rightful owner no question about it in every case no debate about it!

PARTHENON MARBLES !!

They're not Elgin marbles, they're parthenon sculptures and are stolen property

Give Greece their stuff back ffs

The breadth of topics for which Michael Clarke is an expert is forever surprising me.

The amount of stuff that's "gone walkies" from the British Museum. It's a surprise that the Elgins are still there. Saved by their weight? Give them back - it's the right thing to do

The Ottomans did NOT specifically agree to the sale of the Elgin Marbles to the British Museum. They agreed to their removal for preservation but not sell. If Greece wants them back they should be returned regardless of history, the BM can make moulds for their own display.

the audacity to call them Elgin's marbles till today. I really like Michael Clark, but his question where should the heritage be seen? that's not serious, I should go to Japan to see an artifact from Chile? Heritage should stay where it was made, every agreement, deal, purchase, and gift should be annulled. Simple as that. Imagine missing a sequence of stones from Stonehenge and being displayed in Greece. And those stones are being called by the person who brought them. Onassis stones. How beautiful.

I swear Michael Clark is one of the most impartial and well thought out person on Sky, glad to see it continue

Just give them back to Greece, if the intention was to save them for prosterity then they have been saved, and now the Greeks have the means to preserve them so there is no reason not too give them back. Add that this isn't the 1600 or 1800's and global travel is now the norm for just about everyone, so the case that we in UK couldn't see them in Greece now also makes no sense.

Stolen stuff should be returned regardless how u got it, it’s still stolen .

This is way better than the BBC episode which gives no insight to the history whatsoever.

Theft and Looting is a crime. There can be no justification for that. Britain has the moral obligation to retutn the Parthenon Marbles to Greece. One thing these marbles are not and that is "Elgin" as he had no claim on them.

The British Museum of stolen artifacts.

Btw Lord Byron literally cursed Elgin 😅

They've literally just got Micheal Clarke doing side quests now 👏

it's the Parthenon sculptures part of Parthenon and needs to reunite them at the original monument

The Marbles aren't causing a row...Sunak is. This whole stupid situation was getting sorted out until Sunak threw all of his toys out of the pram.

If the British museum return all foreign artefacts, it will be empty 😂

Elgin bribed an Ottoman official to have the Parthenon marbles removed at a time that Greece was occupied by the Ottomans who were actively destroying all traces of non Ottoman culture (so basically everything), not least because these monuments were a constant reminder to enslaved people, on this instance Greeks, of their non Turkic heritage. Elging broke up as much as he could carry and quite possibly, of all the wars and vandalisms that happened over the centuries, his was by far the most serious damage the Parthenon monument in Acropolis ever took, breakage aside with some of the marbles lost forever at the bottom of the sea on their way to Britain. It is not some piece of art like say a painting that was taken, it is a monument that was broken to pieces. There's a reason that monuments are not allowed to be moved or dismantled far beyond mere cultural heritage misappropriation considerations but mostly for preservation and historical reasons. It is all described in the Venice charter that the UK is a signatory of, and not only reprehensible by today's standards, but also illegal. For those who don't know what the Parthenon is, it's a war monument erected to commemorate victory in GrecoPersian wars and honour the dead Athenian soldiers in Marathon (and elsewere) that are depicted in the friezes. It is the equivalent of the cenotaph for British or the Arc de Triomph for the French. It is the same as if say Hitler entered London, or Paris broke up the cenotaph (or Arc de Triomph) and sold its bits to say Mexicans or an American dealer who refused to return it. If anyone really doesn't get how God awful and bestial this is then perhaps they should be considered part of the animal kingdom rather than of human kind. Elgin maybe judged by the standards of his era rather than today's standards and perhaps the story of how the Parthenon marbles ended up where they are today can be viewed under such a prism. But there are no excuses today. Today's people are being judged by tody's standards and what the British museum does (or refuses to do) today is what one would expect of someone to do today. In either case displaying the Parthenon marbles in the British museum is an affront to British and Greek people alike. It's not like it can be swept under the rug, it's blatantly obvious to anyone looking at chopped up Greek marbles in a British museum. Not something one can be proud of. The British museum or the British government can't be forced to do what is right but they have the choice to keep the marbles and the shame, or do away with both.

I swear I could listen to Prof Clarke talk about anything 😆

Well, the said "permission" was a forgery he made himself. Plus because he was out of money by the end of the whole ordeal he couldn't afford more ships and because of the weight one of them was shipwrecked. So, neither he "saved" nor "acquired" them

No contest of course they should be returned to Greece.

What distortion of the historical trhth! The surviving correspondence between Elgin and Luzieri (an Italian artist who worked for Elgin) is extremely revealing about the brutal mutilation of the Acropolis. Referring to a masterpiece sculpture from the frieze of the Parthenon, Luzieri described in 1802 that "we did not saw it properly, as we did not have sufficiently fine saws, and being somewhat thin in the middle, it broke in two in transportation, in spite of all precautions which we received. Fortunately, though, it broke right in the middle and in a straight line, where there was no sculptural form, so the accident helped us quickly move it and load it onto the ship." The marbles were separated by force from the temple and not just randomly picked up for "safekeeping".

MR Sunak. Where there is shame, there is fear, and where there is a fear, there is shame. SOCRATES

How could the British name "Parthenon Sculptures" as Marbles of Elgin who stole them from Greece.... shame....

Imperialism fires back

I love that word *cretin* - I need to start using it more at work! 😅

After this year's massive scandal of inside theft from the British Museum. which the now former director Hartwig Fischer vehemently denied, I do not see how the British could do anything other than hide their heads in shame and give the sculptures back to Greece. It took a Danish outsider to discover it and it took the British Museum three years to acknowledge it.

It was an inappropriate behavior but also very rood on behalf of England's prime minister not accepting to meet the Greek prime minister. The United Kingdom deserves a better leader, who should be more polite, more diplomatic and have good manners. We Greeks love the UK and Great Britain (I always lived in Greece and still will) let us a very bad English prime minister not be an obstacle to our good friendship as states and nations.

Yes, Professor, but unlike other artifacts, the Parthenon marbles are not separate pieces of art. They are part of an entity, and they should be treated as such!

the "history" is always warped Elgin insisted he purchased them but could never present a document this fellow says they were carried off by a nod from the invaders actually they were simply stolen for private use then they were given to the British government to pay taxes that Elgin owed the British Museum being a world class warehouse for looted/stole artifacts was the perfect place or them to end up

With something of that much cultural importance they should be returned in this day and age with a loan agreement agreed in the meantime. Just display something else in the British Museum or create replica's.

The original document by the Ottoman Porte does not exist, only an Italian translation of it, which stipulates that Elgin can make drawings and take 'some stones'. The veracity of this document is ambivalent and Elgin removed more than 'some stones'.

Love this guy.

Where best to see other people’s artefacts if not in western cities where tourists come to visit live their money for westerns economy and nothing for the people who created the art. Then he wants to decide on the future of someone else’s property “go on tour”. The arrogance of it all.

Elgin never took permission to remove them and carry them to England, even from the ottomans. He got permission to go to the place and make moulds for replicas

He had no permission, there is no state document allowing him to take them away. The only document is an Italian "translation" of the so called permission.... The acropolis marbles were stolen and not gifted or sold!

This old man woke up and was excited for work today.

The thief is saying we can look after the Marbles more carefully

If they return these marbles. Than the whole british museum will be emptied out.

Give them back simple..

Will india claim back Sunak??

Sir Michael is fan of historical buildings and architecture.

Sunaks god is money, and so because there is no money in the meeting for himself and his family, he just cancels.

Sky will have Michael Clarke on the football panel next. 😅

Nice, Clarke, solid.

Can't see the problem with selling them back to Greece if the UK government wants to

English arrogance in a nutshell

Love to hear The Place shares what they have on loan. Regards

Love Michael Clarke. He seems to be an expert on everything!

We British appreciate how generous the Greeks are, cheers easy 👍

Give them back.

A PM that does not even have the b... to have a conversation with another European leader...

Losing your marbles always causes trouble 👍

They belong to Greece. Period. No excuse.

They say they were legally taken. Well, show us the firman. Based on the research of two Turkish historians no such firman exists in the records. The marbles were the property of the sultan so a copy must have existed in the palace records. The only record that exists is a letter written in Italian from an official representing the governor of Athens who allowed Elgin to study the marbles.

That Elgin plundered the Parthenon was a criticism made of him in his own lifetime including by Lord Bryon. He originally asked to make drawings of the treasures and then started taking them but it was an arrgagement made with the Ottomans not the Greeks. Theoriginal letterabout the agreement has been lost and the wording of what remains has been disputed. He only sold them to the British Museum bacause he was bankrupted by his divorce,before that they were in hsi private collection.

They should be reunited but it’s going to be difficult to put The Parthenon into The British Museum.

The British should give the historical artifacts that nations ask for back (unless they were sold in legal transactions) and just make copies. No one will be able to tell the difference if the copy is well made.

British public not responsible for any of this!

Why does nobody mention the Pergamon Altar, presently in the Berlin Museum.

Give me a break, send them back to the Athenians. Indeed the terrible precedent would be that artifacts belong as close to their contexts and their people if they have them.

It's not about righteousness , it's common sense. Imagine if a part of the Stonehenge was removed and displayed in the British museum. 😂

Some humble advice to the British: maybe next time don't plunder someone else's property?

Hahaha its hilarious watching them try to put a spin on this other than "We stole them like everything else in the museum" 😂

I remember learning about the Elgin Marbles in school way back in the 90s

Calling the Parthenon marbles Elgin marbles is the definition of appropriation.

If it is difficult for British people to let go of other people's cultural heritage because it reminds them of the days they were an empire, then imagine the sadness of the countries where all these beautiful artifacts originated from...

Took the matbles took Cyprus what great friends the Brits have been to the Greeks 😂

A world tour of original art works is expensive and there's the risk of damage or theft.

Regardless the argument of where they belong to, the fact is that any average Uk prime minister would have made the most out of the meeting, enhancing the relationship with the greek PM and would have still kept the marbles. Rishi cancelled the meeting, out of ignorance and arrogance-I believe. Now the greek PM will go back to greece, stay in his bed, gorge on chocolate, listen to ballads and crying because little Rishi doesn't want to meet him....

Surely the Peace and good relations is more important than keeping these sculptures. Britain should give them back. Come on people, its time to grow up.

Is he going to mention the victorians scrubbing them with bleach? Or the metal rods we put into the columns that made things even worse?

It is the Parthenon sculptures, not just marbles as if there is no art in them and certainly not Elgin's who did not create them, but removed them from their intended place of worship.

It's a good precedent

0:44 '...the most beautiful building EVER created by mankind...'?! I wish people would stick to facts and reporting instead of sneaking in their little opinions as if they were fact?!

Note Lord Elgin was allowed to pick the fallen parts and excavate the buried ones and he proceeded to saw the attached frieze 😢

MR Sunak. Where there is shame there is fear and where there fear there is shame. SOCRATES

Damn through the British, even named it after the guy who stole it?

even on heirtage politics this guy is well informed

"By Jove, that would be exciting!" What an appropriate ending line (for context, Jove is another name for the god Jupiter).

Bring back the Parthenon Sculptures!!!🇬🇷

Let Greece have them back most of the uk public couldn't care less about them anyway

Amazing - flabbergasted. Even the naming of the items is wrong, they are called the Parthenon sculptures by everyone other than the British.

'I want to preserve these things but also because I want my OWN museum' - That is so bipolar, sounds like a thief reasoning himself whatsoever....

the end result is that everybody who has ever taken something from any country will have to return each and every item.. each country can only have its own relics in its museums .. sigh...

they were illegally looted it's time for the sculptures to be reunited with the monument from where they originated

..And in France, and Germany, and Rusia,U.S.A.and Italy,Spain, and in the Churches around Akropolis. :) :) :) ...A never ending list of where Greek artifacts are... Greece is everywhere: :)

This is a desperate attempt at distraction by Sunak.

Keep the replicas and give us back the originals

The kind of permission that Lord Elgin got from the Ottomans is disputed. The Ottomans did care, to an extent, and some say that the permission given was for surveys, not extraction.

Such a same the beautiful Parthenon marbles rottening in English wet mouldy environment than being displayed under gorgeous Athenian skies.

About half of the sculptures from the Parthenon are lost, having been destroyed over the 2,500 years of the building's history. The sculptures that remain are found in museums in five countries, including the Louvre and the National Museum of Denmark, though the majority is divided roughly equally between Athens and London.

Not stolen, finessed

Why not make good quality resin copies for the museum, and return the originals to where they belong ??????????????

Atleast no one can ask to have Prof Michael Clarke returned !... He makes eveything he touches fashinating