ATHENS — The antiflooding system on the Acropolis “worked very well,” Culture & Sports Minister Lina Mendoni said on Tuesday, and it may have been the first time the site did not flood.

Responding to media reports of flooding on the site, the minister told Skai TV that “a large antiflooding project that began in 2020 is continuing, within the context of a grant by the Onassis Foundation.” The recent ‘Ballos’ storm “proved that the antiflooding system worked very well,” she said, underlining that what was seen in the published photographs was “small quantities of water that collected in the natural cavities of boulders or some cavities naturally formed on the Acropolis.”

Mendoni also mentioned the issue of the return of the Parthenon Marbles, citing UNESCO as noting that the issue is an inter-country difference rather than a difference between two museums, the British and the Acropolis ones, that the British side is claiming. She also reiterated that the exhibit conditions in the UK museum’s Duvin Gallery “are problematic, as we have all seen the water seeping through to these exhibit halls.”

In terms of Tatoi park and the damage by fire this past August, she said that “the entire forest and the entire estate of Tatoi should be reforested, not just the historical buildings” of the former summer royal palace.