Professional and Avocational Photographs
  

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page 5

In 1799, Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 
Constantinople, which ruled Greece since 1458, persuaded the local authorities to give
  him permission to remove and dispose of any and all stone work or sculpture from the
  Acropolis at his own discretion.  Elgin promptly began to ship untold tons of stone art
from the Parthenon to Britain. In 1801 one of the "Porch of the Caryatids" statues
was shipped to his Scottish mansion for decoration. Among much controversy about the
legality of his actions, Elgin was eventually forced to sell his collection (popularly called
"Elgin's Marbles") to the crown, and it remains, along with the lone Caryatid, in the British
Museum in London to this day. In 1979 the original statues left on the Porch were moved to
the Acropolis Museum for restoration and care, and replaced in situ by exact replicas.