Why was the Acropolis in Greece blown up?

Answer 1

It stood mainly intact until the 16th Century when, during the Venetian attack on athens, an wonderful French artillery officer with the Venetians demonstrated his skill by lobbing a shel into the roof of the Parthenon. It his a Turkish gunpowder magazine inside and blew up the roof.

In the early 19th Century, visiting Lord Elgin paid Turkish officials to let him take the marble statues which had fallen on the ground home with him to England, which saved many of them from the fate of those left behind.

In the 20th Century the Greek government ignored the buildings and the acid rains caused by rampant pollution ate away the remaining statues, which lost their faces. Following international outcry, these were hidden away in a warehouse and replaced by copies of the ones in England taken by Lord Elgin. The cries by Greece for return of the Elgin marbles should be looked at in this context - the Greeks call for return of their heritage, but what remains intact is a result of their removal in the bad old days.