Athens' National Art Gallery showcases works from the 14th to the 20th centuries, and is best known for its collections of Greek and Renaissance art, including paintings by El Greco, Tiepolo and Brueghel.

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Later that week, we drove north along the famed Pacific Coast Highway to the Getty Villa in Malibu, an offshoot of the Getty Center in Los Angeles that houses ancient Greek and Roman art.

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Mr Scafi tells this story well from the sublime start to the ridiculous end, with spectacular flourishes of art history and confident quotes from Latin, Greek and Hebrew.

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First of all, the art style and design of the game, taken from Greek pottery designs, is absolutely gorgeous.

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Opened in 1866, this incredible cemetery boasts 250, 000 square-metres of eclectic art nouveau sculptures including Greek temples, elaborate obelisks and giant, glass-fronted, marble tombs that could pass for houses.

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An eventual solution though probably not one that will happen on Mr MacGregor's watch would be to send the marbles back to Athens on loan and accept the Greek offer to provide a series of temporary exhibitions of classical art to fill the gallery.

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And though the city's monumental examples of the beaux arts and art deco movements are well documented in civic buildings dressed up in a mixed bag of Classical Roman and Greek elements, the city actually received its greatest modern architectural contribution in the years after WWII, when Ludwig Mies van der Rohe pioneered the new "International Style".

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