Ancient Greece

Davelor Ships Services will participate as an exhibitor at the Posidonia Sea Tourism Forum for the first time this month, aiming to promote its wide range of services that include crew handling, spare forwarding and logistics, technical & repair support and medical services.

As the international cruise industry prepares for the highly anticipated Posidonia Sea Tourism Forum on April 25-26 in Thessaloniki, Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) predicts that the sector will attract up to 33 million passengers in 2023, significantly exceeding the 29.7 million recorded in 2019, the last year before the pandemic.

Greece on March 24 welcomed the return of ancient artifacts from the Acropolis, furthering a campaign to press the British Museum to hand back a collection of sculptures taken from the ancient site in Athens more than 200 years ago.

Two ships from the Greek fleet will dock at Piraeus and be open to the public for visits over the weekend to mark the March 25 national holiday.

The Hellenic Navy's frigate "Themistoklis" and gunboat "Karathanassis" will be docked at Gate E12 (Akti Themistokleous).

Acropolis Museum Director Nikolaos Stampolidis points to a sculpture of a horse's head that is one of three fragments from the Parthenon frieze returned to Greece by the Vatican Museums in the form of a "donation" by Pope Francis to Archbishop Ieronymos.

Three fragments of the Athens Parthenon, hosted for centuries in the Vatican collections and museums, will be returned to Greece after the Greek Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, signed the donation protocol in Rome on March Tuesday.

It appears to be only a matter of time, specifically of weeks, for the return and placement in the Acropolis Museum of the three Parthenon fragments, which Pope Francis 'donated' to Archbishop Ieronymos last December.

What else but the Eleusinian Mysteries could have inspired the opening ceremony of Elefsina's year as a European Capital of Culture?

Achieving an agreement for the permanent return of the Parthenon Sculptures to Greece by the British Museum "is difficult, but not impossible," said Culture Minister Lina Mendoni in Parliament on Monday, reiterating the government's stance that she says "remains national, unanimous, consistent and clear."

The cosmopolitan city of Melbourne in Australia, which also happens to be the capital of the Greek diaspora, is currently hosting the recreation of the Parthenon on the Acropolis as "The Temple of Boom." Australia is a beacon of democracy, and has embedded similar values and an institutional framework to those of the ancient Athenian democracy, very much like other full democracies.