Greek PM rejects Bayeux Tapestry as model for Marbles deal

Greece's prime minister has rejected the idea that the Bayeux Tapestry loan to London could point to a deal over the Parthenon sculptures.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he was "surprised" by the suggestion from Nicholas Cullinan, director of the British Museum in London. Cullinan had said the Anglo-French arrangement that brought the Tapestry to London could be a template for a loan agreement over the Marbles, a temporary display deal in which ownership stays with the lender The Art Newspaper.

Mitsotakis answered in an op-ed published by The Guardian in London on 24 September. He said nobody would contemplate cutting the surviving Bayeux Tapestry in two and putting half on show in London and half in Bayeux, in France. Yet that, he wrote, is what happened to the Parthenon sculptures.

He said no. Greece cannot accept any arrangement that asks it to recognise the British Museum's ownership of the sculptures, he wrote. Nor, he said, can Athens agree to borrow parts of its own monument.

The Tapestry display sits in the museum's Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery and runs until 11 July 2027. The museum lists the dates as 10 September 2026 to 11 July 2027 and describes the show as a historic loan from France.

The Marbles dispute is older and harder to shift. The sculptures were removed from the Parthenon in Athens by Lord Elgin and have been housed in the British Museum since 1817. The museum says it is prevented from returning them by the British Museum Act 1963, the law that limits what it can give away from its collection The Art Newspaper.

In the op-ed, Mitsotakis wrote that citizens in both Greece and Britain think the sculptures should be returned. What is needed, he wrote, is political will and courage The Guardian.

What makes this stand out is the paperwork. One loan was built to send a treasure home again. The other asks who the home belongs to.