Give us back the Venus de Milo, Greeks tell Louvre

In a fresh claim of cultural restitution, Greece launched an unprecedented bid yesterday to win back the Venus de Milo from the Louvre. Gerasimos Damoulakis, mayor of the island of Milos, in the southeast Aegean Sea, where the marble masterpiece was unearthed in 1820, is campaigning to collect one million signatures for a petition in advance of the 200th anniversary of the statue’s discovery. The petition will be presented to the European Union and the Louvre in a bid to bring the statue back to its homeland. “The claim itself isn’t new,” Mr Damoulakis said. “There’s not a Greek out there who hasn’t wondered why Greece’s finest piece of antiquity is sitting in France rather than in its birthplace. (Anthee Carassava, 'Give us back the Venus de Milo, Greeks tell Louvre' the Times, November 30 2016).

OK, so why is it?

Vignette: From Milos