Vatican Will Return Parthenon Sculptures to Greece

VATICAN CITY—The Associated Press reports that three fragments of the Parthenon marbles currently held in the Vatican Museums will be repatriated to Greece following a request for their return made by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. The return is described by the Vatican as a donation from Roman Catholic leader Pope Francis to His Beatitude Ieronymos II, the Orthodox Christian archbishop of Athens, and all of Greece. The fragments include the head of a horse, the head of a boy, and a bearded male head from the 520-foot frieze depicting a procession in honor of the goddess Athena that surrounded the Parthenon, which was built on the Athenian Acropolis in the fifth century B.C. The sculpture fragments will be reunited with others now on display in the Acropolis Museum, according to a statement from the Greek Ministry of Culture. To read about ongoing work to document other marble fragments on the Acropolis, go to "The Acropolis of Athens: Scattered Architecture."