British Museum rules out loaning Parthenon Marbles to Greece

The director of the British Museum, Hartwig Fischer, insisted in an interview published by Greece’s Ta Nea newspaper on Saturday that Greece is not the legal owner of the Parthenon Marbles and ruled out the possibility of an open-ended loan of the sculptures to Greece.

Rebuffing the idea of an open-ended loan in general, Fischer said that loans are only made to those who recognize the ownership of the artifacts they wish to borrow, insisting that the Marbles belong to the British Museum.