Parthenon Project | Autumn 2022
The parts of the frieze that are in the British Museum makes up around 80 meters of the total frieze. 50 remaining meters are in the Acropolis museum, and the remaining few fragments are scattered across the various museums you can see below through the software Peripleo.
The fragments in the Museé de Louvre are from the right of the frieze on the eastern side of the temple. One segment of the block depicts the point where a procession is coming to an end and the bodies of the two male and six female figures remain intact; however, only three female figures retain their head. This fragment is unlikely to ever be given back to Greece as the Louvre has proven to be unwilling to engage with conversations regarding the repatriation of the marbles in the past.
The fragments in the Vatican Museums include a head of a horse comes from the west frieze of the building and a fragment of a man holding a tray. These are a part of a larger piece of artwork that shows the struggle between Athena and Poseidon for patronage over Athens. The Vatican lended the fragment of the man holding a tray to the Acropolis Museum in 2008.
The fragments from the National Museum in Copenhagen can be seen through the hyperlink to Google’s streetview feature. The two heads housed in this museum tell the story of Lapith and the Centaur from the South Metope (the rest of this metope is housed in the British Museum). Both figures’ heads as well as a part of the Centaur’s leg were bought in Athens in 1688 by a Danish officer and remain in the museum. There have been little discussions about joining the metope with the other sculptures in the Acropolis Museum.
The fragment from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria displays several fragments from the North Frieze which made their way into the museum’s collection by the Palazzo del Catajo in northern Italy. There have been discussions of loaning this fragments to the Acropolis Museum.
The fragment at the Glyptothek appears to be not digitized as I could find no information about it online other than the fact that it was a Palmette from a Slideshare presentation of dubios credibility. There is no information on if the Glyptothek intends to repatriate their fragment or even if their fragment is still in their collection.
The fragment is the head of a centaur from the South Metope currently on display at the University of Würzburg in Germany. The University of Würzburg has been reluctant to entertain talks about repatriating the artifact.
The fragment from Palermo shows Artemis’ foot and comes from the Eastern frieze. It was originally a part of the Parthenon sculptures in the British museum but was given to the museum in Palermo as a gesture of goodwill. It was later given in an indefinite loan to the Acropolis Museum in 2022 to be displayed with the other parts of the Parthenon.