Acropolis Museum in the context of "Caryatid"

The Elgin Marbles (/ˈɛlɡɪn/ ELG-in) are a collection of Ancient Greek sculptures from the Parthenon and other structures from the Acropolis of Athens, removed from Ottoman Greece in the early 19th century and shipped to Britain by agents of Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, and now held in the British Museum in London. The majority of the sculptures were created in the 5th century BC under the direction of sculptor and architect Phidias.

The term Parthenon Marbles or Parthenon Sculptures (Greek: Γλυπτά του Παρθενώνα) refers to sculptures—the frieze, metopes and pediments—from the Parthenon held in various collections, principally the British Museum and the Acropolis Museum in Athens.

A votive offering or votive deposit is one or more objects displayed or deposited, without the intention of recovery or use, in a sacred place for religious purposes. Such items are a feature of modern and ancient societies and are generally made to gain favor with supernatural forces.

While some offerings were apparently made in anticipation of the achievement of a particular wish, in Western cultures from which documentary evidence survives it was more typical to wait until the wish had been fulfilled before making the offering, for which the more specific term ex-voto may be used. Other offerings were very likely regarded just as gifts to the deity, not linked to any particular need.

Kritios (Ancient Greek: Κριτίος, /krɪˈtiːəs/) was an Athenian sculptor, probably a pupil of Antenor, working in the early 5th century BCE, whose manner is on the cusp of the Late Archaic and the Severe style of Early Classicism in Attica. He was the teacher of Myron. With Nesiotes (Νησιώτης,) Kritios made the replacement of the Tyrannicides ("Tyrant-killers") group by Antenor, which had been carried off by the Persians in the first stage of the Greco-Persian Wars. The new group stood in the Agora of Athens and its composition is known from Roman copies.

With Nesiotes Kritios made other statues, of bronze, dedicated on the Acropolis, of which only their inscribed bases remain to give testament. The head of a marble statue found on the Acropolis so much resembles the copies of one of the Tyrannicides – Harmodius – that it has been called the Kritios Boy (now in the Acropolis Museum). Its easy naturalism and relaxed contrapposto set it apart from the Late Archaic conventional kouroi that preceded it. It was re-discovered too late (1865) to have had an effect on Neoclassical sculpture, as it would have done if it had been known a century earlier.

The so-called Mourning Athena (or Greek: Σκεπτομένη Αθηνά "Pensive Athena") is an Athenian marble relief dated circa 460 BC which depicts Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and warfare and patron-deity of the city of Athens. The relief is 0.48 m high and made of Parian marble. Today it is displayed at the Acropolis Museum in Athens, with inventory no. 695.

The Rampin Rider or Rampin Horseman (c. 550 BC) is an equestrian statue from the Archaic Period of Ancient Greece. It is made of marble, and has traces of red and black paint.

The head of the rider was found on the Acropolis of Athens in 1877 and donated to the Louvre. Parts of the body of the rider and horse were found ten years earlier in a Perserschutt ditch filled with statues broken during the 480 BC Persian sack of Athens. The head was not associated with the rest of the statue until 1936. The statue is displayed with a plaster cast of the head at the Acropolis Museum, while the head remains at the Louvre where it is displayed with a cast of the rest of the statue.