Projects
New Acropolis Museum
Client Organisation for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum (OANMA) Architectural design Bernard Tschumi Architects
Athens, Greece
The Acropolis Museum was built to display the most important and significant finds from the Acropolis and its slopes. Designed by architect Bernard Tschumi with Michael Photiadis, it was inaugurated in summer 2009. The Acropolis Museum covers a total surface area of 25,000 square metres, its exhibition space exceeding 14,000 square metres. The Museum's architectural shape was dictated by three main requirements: visual contact with the Acropolis monuments had to be maintained, Parthenon sculptures had to be displayed in their entirety and the building had to be adapted to the archaeological digs extending amongst the foundations. The visual link between the Parthenon sculptures displayed in the Museum and the monument from which they came was achieved through the glass outer walls of the Parthenon Gallery. From this Gallery, visitors can enjoy a breathtaking view of the Acropolis, of its historic surrounding hills and the modern city of Athens. At the heart of the Parthenon Gallery is a concrete rectangular area with the same dimensions and orientation as the Parthenon, specially designed to receive and display the temple's entire frieze. At its base, the Museum seems to “float” on more than 100 concrete pillars which are an extraordinary setting for the site's archaeological digs. The Museum holds collections on three levels, as well as in the archaeological digs in its foundations. On the ground floor is the ‘Gallery of the slopes of the Acropolis’ with finds from the sanctuaries
discovered on the slopes of the Acropolis, plus objects used in daily life by Athenians throughout different periods in history. On the first floor of the Museum visitors can follow the steps of the evolution of the Acropolis. The eastern and southern sections of the first floor house the ‘Archaic Gallery’, nine metres high and naturally lit, containing the magnificent sculptures which decorated the first temples on the Acropolis. The gallery is also used to display votive offerings from the faithful, including splendid ancient Korai (representations of young women), Hippeis (cavalry men), statues of the Goddess Athena, sculptures of male figures, relief work on marble and smaller votive offerings made of bronze and clay. The Museum exhibition culminates on the third floor in the glazed area housing the ‘Parthenon Gallery’. The relief sculptures of the Parthenon frieze depicting the Panathenaic procession are displayed in a continuous sequence along the outside of the rectangular area housing the Gallery. Metopes, marble sheets with relief images of Greek mythology, are displayed between the steel columns of the Parthenon. The colossal figures of the two pediments (triangular elements at the top of facades) are placed on pedestals on the eastern and western sides of the Gallery, in the same positions that they would have occupied in the Parthenon. The eastern pediment shows the birth of the Goddess Athena from the head of her father Zeus, whilst the western pediment depicts the contest over Attica between Athena and Poseidon.
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