Greek rights to the Parthenon Marbles

  - Since 1817, half of the Parthenon Marbles from Athens have been housed in the British Museum. Despite frequent requests from the Greek authorities, the UK refuses to return them to their country of origin. According to the work of a CNRS researcher, there is no legal argument to support the UK's refusal to return these sculptures to Greece. Although negotiations between the British Museum and Greece appear to have reached stalemate, research shows that there is no legal argument to support the UK's refusal to return the Parthenon Marbles to their country of origin. The Parthenon Marbles and International Law , published on 25 May 2023 by Springer, is the result of a study conducted by international lawyer Catharine Titi, a CNRS researcher at the Centre d'études et de recherches de sciences administratives et politiques (CNRS/Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas). The UK's argument for refusing to return the Parthenon Marbles to Athens is twofold: their acquisition in the 1800s by Lord Elgin was legal under the laws and customs of the time, and as the law is not retroactive the current legal order against spoliation of cultural property cannot be applied. In her new book, Titi refutes these justifications point by point by reviewing the history of the marbles' extraction, and analysing the Ottoman documents, Lord Elgin's correspondence and the British parliamentary report.