A retired Swedish gym teacher has returned an ancient piece of the Acropolis, taken by a member of her family more than a century ago.

Birgit Wiger-Angner returned the 20-by-8 centimetre section of the Erechtheion temple, built in the fifth century B.C., over the weekend. The 89-year-old said her great uncle, a naval officer, took it during a visit in 1896.

A 2,400-year-old piece from the Erechtheion temple was picked up more than 100 years ago by a Swedish woman's great uncle during a visit to Athens.
(Petros Giannakouris/ Associated Press)

"I really hope this will be a signal to the many people in Europe, tourists and especially the British Museum, that has so many things from ancient Greece, to give them back to the Greek people," said Wiger-Angner.

Greek's culture minister Giorgos Voulgarakis hailed the gesture as "extremely significant."

"The restitution of even the smallest fragment from the Parthenon and the Acropolis in general is of the highest value to us."

Wiger-Angner's move should boost the Greek government's campaign asking for the return of many of its historical pieces, especially the sculptures and fragments of the 2,500-year-old Parthenon temple removed by Britain's Lord Elgin in the early 19th century.

More pieces being handed over

The restitution of ancient artifacts has become an issue of late.  In September, Heidelberg University in Germany became the first foreign institution to return a piece of the Parthenon, a tiny sculpture of a foot.  And, in the summer, the J. Paul Getty museum in California gave two looted statues back to Italy.

"I think it is really just a moral obligation to add and share in the reunification of the Parthenon marbles, which is a world monument," said Eleni Korka, director of classical antiquities at the Greek ministry of culture.

But the British Museum in London has resisted such pressure to return the Elgin Marbles, insisting the sculptures were legally obtained from the authority governing Greece when Elgin took them.  At the time, Greece was under the control of the Ottoman Empire.

The Erechtheion fragment, meanwhile, that was returned by Wiger-Angner, has floral motifs and once belonged to a 60-metre frieze that ran around the temple.

Wiger-Angner inherited the piece from her father and kept it on her bookshelf until early last year, when it went on temporary display in a museum in Stockholm.

It will now be on view in a new museum under the Acropolis, scheduled to open in late 2007.

With files from the Associated Press