Lego Acropolis goes to Athens

Lego master builder Ryan McNaught with his Lego Acropolis in the Nicholson Museum (all photos by Brickman)

By Elissa Blake

Lego Oedipus, Lego Lord Elgin and Lego Sigmund Freud are on their way to Greece, part of an extraordinary gift from the University of Sydney’s Nicholson Museum to the new Acropolis Museum in Athens.

The figures are a small part of a Lego Acropolis built by Ryan McNaught, the only Lego-certified professional in the southern hemisphere. It contains more than 120,000 bricks and took approximately 300 hours to build. Faithfully recreated in gleaming white bricks, the model features The Parthenon, the Temple of Athena Nike, the smaller Erechtheion temple and the site’s monumental gateway, the Propylaia.

It also contains hilarious modern and ancient scenes using Lego mini-figures. In the small Odeon, Theseus winds his way through a labyrinth to face the Minotaur. In the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, Elton John gives a concert to modern-day tourists. Lord Elgin and his crew can be seen making off with the Parthenon marbles, while Sigmund Freud, who visited the Acropolis in 1904, looks on.

The model has attracted more than 100,000 visitors to the Nicholson since it was unpacked a year ago. This came as no surprise after the museum’s Lego Colosseum attracted 90,000 visitors in 2012. But the interest from Athens came as a shock.

A market outside the Stoa Eumenes. 

The western view. 

Oedipus Rex in the Theatre of Dionysos.

Michael Turner, senior curator at the Nicholson Museum, says the Acropolis Museum emailed him “out of the blue” asking if they could borrow the model in order to attract younger visitors.

“This could only happen in my wildest dreams,” says Turner. “After a largely sleepless night, I got back to the museum and said no, they couldn’t borrow it … we’d give it to them.”

The $US200m Acropolis Museum, opened at the foot of the Acropolis hill in 2009 with a direct view of the Parthenon, is home to all of the archeological finds from on and around the Acropolis, including what was left of the Parthenon sculptures left behind by Lord Elgin between 1801 and 1812. These are now in the British Museum and are a topic of intense international controversy and debate.

“The British Museum refuses to return the Parthenon Marbles. The Nicholson Museum and University of Sydney donates a whole Acropolis!” jokes Turner. “Of all the museums in the world I would like to see the Lego Acropolis end up in, this is without a doubt the one and only.”

All ready to ship to Athens (photo courtesy of The Nicholson Museum).

The model will arrive at the Acropolis Museum this week and makes way for The Nicholson Museum to present a new model, Lego Pompeii, in January 2015.

This story was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald on June 29, 2014.