Melina Mercouri was born 106 years ago today, on October 18, 1920, and the international campaign she built around the P...

Melina Mercouri was born 106 years ago today, on October 18, 1920, and the international campaign she built around the Parthenon Sculptures still drives Greek cultural diplomacy more than three decades after her death. Mercouri became Greece's culture minister in 1981 and immediately made the return of the sculptures her defining mission. She argued, persistently and publicly, that the marbles were architectural elements of a single monument, not objects that could exist independently in a foreign museum. In 1982, she brought the case to UNESCO's World Conference on Cultural Policies in Mexico City, telling delegates, "You must understand what the Parthenon Marbles mean to us." Her campaign had teeth. In 1983, she confronted British Museum director Sir David Wilson directly over the restitution demand, and in 1986 she took the argument into British territory itself, addressing a debate at the Oxford Union. "There are no Elgin Marbles," she told the audience, insisting the sculptures be identified with the Parthenon and not with the diplomat who ordered their removal. The British Museum and British government rejected Greece's demand throughout her lifetime. The sculptures had been removed from the Acropolis between 1801 and 1812 by agents of Lord Elgin and have been held by the British Museum since 1816. Britain maintains they were lawfully acquired. Greece has never accepted that position. Mercouri had already shown her readiness to fight authority. After the military coup of April 1967, the junta stripped her of her citizenship and seized her property while she campaigned against the dictatorship from abroad. She returned after democracy was restored in 1974 and entered politics with PASOK. She also founded the European Capital of Culture initiative, launched in Athens in 1985, a program that continues across the continent today. She died of cancer in New York on March 6, 1994, at 73, without seeing the marbles returned. Before she died she said, "If they come back later, I shall be reborn." The Acropolis Museum opened in 2009 with dedicated space for the sculptures. They remain in London. #ParthenonMarbles #MelinaMercouri #Greece