Greek wine and wine making is as ancient as the marble columns that line the Parthenon.
The current Lord Elgin said it was "completely untrue" to suggest his ancestor had plundered the Parthenon.
But the Parthenon gallery in the new museum is 300 metres and a single glance away from the temple.
The marbles, ancient sculptures which once adorned the Parthenon in Athens, have been held in the British Museum since 1811.
BBC: NEWS | Entertainment | Marbles exhibition opens in London
The Taj Mahal has been described as "poetry in stone, " a rival to the Parthenon in sheer symmetry and beauty.
The Parthenon marbles needed to be reunited and that could only happen by returning those in London to Greece, he argued.
And the government, desperate to raise money, is said to be putting price tags on the Parthenon, the Acropolis, and several islands.
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Why, for example, should the BM retain the Parthenon marbles in London?
It features alongside a presentation of how the various elements from the Parthenon, currently divided between Athens and London, will come together.
The first important thing about the Parthenon is that, unlike most ancient Greek monuments, it survived more or less intact into modern times.
The Greek authorities wish to reunite all the surviving sculptures from the Parthenon in the new Acropolis museum, which they say will open next year.
Everyone is familiar with the Elgin Marbles, removed by Lord Elgin from the Parthenon in the early 19th century under the eyes of the Ottoman Empire.
Greece is insisting that the British Museum surrender the marble sculptures that Lord Elgin took down from the Parthenon and carted away in the early 1800s.
Mr Tschumi's showpiece is the top-floor Parthenon gallery, a cool glass box with a spectacular view that mirrors the dimensions and orientation of the temple itself.
When the Greek monetary system earlier this year looked more ready to crumble than the Parthenon, observers from Goldman Sachs to BlackRock issued gloomy outlooks.
As curators all over the world will see it, those who call for the permanent return of the Parthenon sculptures from London are arguing for international museums to be emptied.
"There has been a misconception that the entirety of the collection is in the British Museum, " said Freddie New, of the British Committee For The Restitution Of The Parthenon Marbles.
BBC: NEWS | Entertainment | Marbles exhibition opens in London
With the opening of an impressive new museum in Athens (see article), the sculptures from the Parthenon now have good cause to be reunited, if only for artistic reasons.
But the British Museum has refused to return its Parthenon sculptures, almost all of which were brought back from Athens in the early 19th century by the British diplomat, Lord Elgin.
"The clock is ticking towards 2004 when the whole world's eyes will be on Athens as the Olympic Games are held there, " said Richard Allan MP, head of the marbles campaign group Parthenon 2004.
BBC: NEWS | Entertainment | Marbles exhibition opens in London
Among other disputes over famous artefacts, Greece has for many years called for the return of the Elgin Marbles, removed from the Parthenon some 200 years ago and taken to London by the Earl of Elgin.
During a tour of the Acropolis on Saturday, Mr Clinton assured Greece's minister of culture, Elisavet Papazoi, that he would urge Britain to return the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon which are the subject of an ongoing dispute.
Alexandros Mantis, a Greek expert on the ancient Acropolis temples, also points out that the frieze, which ran around the exterior of the Parthenon, is arranged in London around the interior of a gallery, which is architecturally and aesthetically wrong.
Yet it is this very palpability within a landscape that makes many people believe that the Parthenon sculptures should be viewed, not in the grey light of their London vault, but within direct view of the location for which they were created.
Figural and symbolic reliefs are not high overhead as in the Parthenon or Chartres Cathedral, but at one's own level so that one is immersed in the visual experience most of the piers are little more than twice my height, and the figuration begins immediately above the socle (base).
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