UK nationals outnumber Germans for first time, as post-pandemic rebound helps Greek economy to grow by 5.6% in 2022
UK travellers are leading an extraordinary rebound in tourism to Greece with arrivals up by 181% last year, according to the country’s central bank.
Almost 4.5 million Britons were registered at Greek entry points, a record number and nearly 3 million more than in 2021.
Continue reading...Revised Treasure Act for England, Wales and Northern Ireland will broaden legal definition of treasure
A rise in the number of detectorists unearthing historical artefacts has prompted an effort to broaden the legal definition of treasure to help museums to acquire important items.
The heritage minister, Stephen Parkinson, said some items had been lost into private ownership rather than displayed publicly in museums, due to the wording of the Treasure Act 1996.
Continue reading...‘It’s time for a whole host of other perspectives,’ says museum’s director after £15m redevelopment
After 18 months of closure and a £15m redevelopment, Manchester Museum will reopen to the public on Saturday.
Alongside the existing collection of about 4.5m objects, from mounted mammals to botanical specimens and fossils, visitors will also be able to explore new spaces and hear diverse, untold stories.
Continue reading...Unknown patterns found on ceramics from Josephine Willis, which collided with steamer in 1856
The wreck of a mid-19th century sailing ship transporting British people to New Zealand and with a cargo of exceptionally rare ceramics onboard has been listed for protection 167 years after it sank off the Kent coast.
The Josephine Willis wooden packet boat, built in Limehouse and launched in 1854 by HH Willis & Co, foundered four miles (6.4km) south of Folkestone harbour following a collision with the steamer Mangerton on 3 February 1856, with the loss of 70 lives including Captain Edward Canney. The ship lies in two parts on the seabed, 23 metres deep.
Continue reading...Photographs show stones from walls of Roman-era building in Turkey have cascaded down its side
The partial destruction of a Roman-era castle in the Turkish city of Gaziantep has led to fears that two earthquakes that struck on Monday may have damaged other priceless monuments in Turkey and Syria, areas rich in cultural heritage.
Photographs and footage of Gaziantep Castle, considered one of the best-preserved citadels in Turkey, showed parts of its stone walls had cascaded down the side of the fort.
Continue reading...Work depicting mythological hero and apparently dating back to Roman imperial period found near Appian Way
An ancient Roman statue of Hercules has been discovered during repairs to the sewerage system underneath a park in Rome.
The statue, which apparently dates back to the Roman imperial period (27BC to AD476), emerged from the ground around the second mile mark along the ancient Appian Way, a famed historic road.
Continue reading...Klein Hollandia discovery ‘opens up fascinating chapter in rich, shared maritime history between UK and Netherlands’
• Shipwrecked: how tech is revealing world of 3m lost vessels
A remarkably preserved shipwreck known only as the “unknown wreck off Eastbourne” has finally been identified as the 17th-century Dutch warship Klein Hollandia which was involved in all the big battles in the second Anglo-Dutch war.
Its identity has been confirmed after painstaking research by archeologists and scientists after its initial discovery in 2019, having lain 32 metres (105ft) underwater on the seabed since 1672.
Continue reading...National Highways faces third intervention by a local authority over infilling, after burying Congham bridge in Norfolk in tonnes of concrete
A controversial practice by the government’s roads agency of burying historic railway bridges in concrete has been dealt a fresh blow after a third council intervened over another infilled structure.
King’s Lynn and West Norfolk council has told National Highways it must apply for retrospective planning permission if it wants to retain hundreds of tonnes of aggregate and concrete it used to submerge Congham bridge, a few miles east of King’s Lynn.
Continue reading...A plan from Czech railways to replace the emblematic landmark with a modern structure is facing an impassioned backlash
A historic Prague railway bridge, whose importance to the city’s landscape has been compared to the Eiffel tower in Paris, has been earmarked for demolition in a move denounced by architects and preservationists.
The much-photographed Vyšehrad bridge – instantly recognisable for its parabolic lattice steel structure – is unfit to carry an anticipated rising volume of rail traffic, claims Czech Railways, which plans to replace it with a modern structure.
Continue reading...Saga continues over property housing Caravaggio’s only ceiling fresco as fifth auction fails to attract bids
A princess living in a villa in Rome that contains the only ceiling fresco ever painted by Caravaggio has said she would “vigorously defend” her right to stay in the sprawling property after a judge ordered her eviction.
The US-born Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, the only occupant of the 16th-century Villa Aurora, has been embroiled in a long-running inheritance dispute with the three sons of her late husband, Prince Nicolò Boncompagni Ludovisi, who was the property’s last owner.
Continue reading...Clerical leaders hope for ‘lasting legacy’ to serve places affected by past slavery trade, but fund may spread thinly across all of west Africa and Caribbean
The Church of England’s decision to set up a £100m fund for communities adversely affected by historic slavery is the latest – and biggest – step it has taken over the past few years to “address past wrongs” relating to its links to the slave trade.
The report on the origins of the C of E’s healthy £9bn-plus endowment fund correctly describes the 17th century slave trade as “abhorrent” and a source of misery and injustice.
Continue reading...Gaelic origins of Icelandic words and landmarks challenge orthodox view of Viking heritage, says author
According to folklore, a Gaelic-speaking warrior queen called Aud was among Iceland’s earliest settlers. Her story is central to an emerging theory that Scottish and Irish Celts played a far bigger role in Iceland’s history than realised.
A book by Thorvaldur Fridriksson, an Icelandic archaeologist and journalist, argues that Gaelic-speaking Celtic settlers from Ireland and western Scotland had a profound impact on the Icelandic language, landscape and early literature.
Continue reading...Three 2,500-year-old pieces will be ‘donated’ to Greece’s Archbishop Ieronymos II amid wider conversation about future of Parthenon marbles held by Britain
Pope Francis has decided to return to Greece three 2,500-year-old pieces of the Parthenon that have been in the papal collections of the Vatican Museums for two centuries.
The Vatican said in a brief statement that the pope was giving them to Archbishop Ieronymos II, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church and Greece’s spiritual leader, as a “donation” and “a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth”.
Continue reading...‘Considerable portion’ of priceless treasures from Green Vault museum recovered amid trial of suspects
German authorities said they have found a “considerable portion” of items stolen in a spectacular 2019 robbery of priceless 18th-century jewels from a state museum.
The authorities retrieved 31 individual items in the capital, Berlin, the police and prosecutors said.
Continue reading...Chair of the museum, George Osborne, says it no longer wants to be a ‘destination for climate protest’
The future for the British Museum could be very different indeed. That was the message from the organisation’s chair George Osborne in his annual speech to Trustees last month, in which he announced a “complete reimagination” of the museum, under a billion-pound masterplan that will be revealed next year.
Among the hints of potential loans of its exhibits, leading to further speculation over the Parthenon marbles, was one explicit promise on energy. “Our goal is to be a net zero carbon museum,” said Osborne, “no longer a destination for climate protest but instead an example of climate solution”.
Continue reading...No plans to amend legislation that could stop removal back to Greece, after secret talks held over their future
Rishi Sunak has ruled out changing a law that could prevent the British Museum from handing the Parthenon marbles back to Greece, after it emerged that trustees have held secret talks with the Greek prime minister about the future of the artefacts.
The prime minister’s official spokesperson said there were no plans to amend legislation under which a museum can dispose of objects within its collection only in very limited circumstances. However, it could decide to lend part of the collection to Greece.
Continue reading...Officials say they have met with George Osborne, and are keen to see the masterpieces back in Athens
Senior Greek officials have been in “preliminary” talks with the British Museum in what could amount to a tectonic shift in resolving the world’s longest-running cultural dispute: the repatriation of the 5th-century BC Parthenon marbles to Athens.
Revelations about the negotiations were first reported on Saturday by Ta Nea, which said that officials including the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, had met George Osborne, the chair of the British Museum, in a five-star London hotel as recently as Monday.
Continue reading...Fresh evidence of owners’ lavish lifestyle discovered at same site as rare Iliad mosaic
If you thought barn conversions were a relatively recent development for the property-owning classes, you’d be wrong – probably by 16 or 17 centuries.
Archaeologists at the site of a Roman villa complex in the east Midlands have discovered that its wealthy owners converted an agricultural timber barn into a dwelling featuring a bathing suite with a hot steam room, a warm room and a cold plunge pool.
Continue reading...Viking-style vessel is based on the one that launched invasion of England in 1066 and its makers hope to sail it across Channel
On 27 September 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, set sail in La Mora, the flagship of a huge fleet that would invade and conquer England. Now a historical society on France’s Normandy coast is going to re-create the ship that launched almost 1,000 years of cross-Channel enmity.
The Bayeux tapestry, a 70 metre-long (230ft) embroidered account of the Norman Conquest, depicts La Mora as a Viking-style longship with a striped red and gold sail flying the papal banner on its masthead. On board was William, his most trusted knights, their entourage and horses, and 60 oarsmen.
Continue reading...San Casciano dei Bagni’s fortunes expected to change after opulent Etruscan-Roman sanctuary found
Since she was a child, Martina Canuti has been venturing down the steep hill flanking the Tuscan town of San Casciano dei Bagni, known by residents as “the sacred mountain”, to take a dip in the two ancient hot springs famed for their therapeutic benefits.
Little did she know that just a few metres away lay a sanctuary built by the Etruscans in the second century BC, containing a trove of treasures that could now reverse the fortunes of this relatively isolated town of 1,400 inhabitants near Siena.
Continue reading...