Signing of the agreement between the Chinese Minister of Tourism and Culture, Hu Heping, and the Greek Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, Photo source: Ministry of Culture.
Greece And China are committed to strengthening their cultural collaboration with the renewal and expansion of a Cooperation agreement connected to underwater cultural heritage.
The renewal agreement, which encourages scientific cooperation and underwater cooperation archaeological researchwas signed during a meeting between the Greek Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni and Chinese Minister of Tourism and Culture Hu Hepingas part of the latter’s official visit to Greece.
During their meeting, the ministers also discussed the progress of the Piraeus Museum of Underwater Antiquities project, which should be hosted in a silo at the port of Piraeus.
Photorealistic depiction of the Piraeus Museum of Underwater Antiquities.
The project has a budget of 100 million euroswith funding guaranteed by the EU Recovery and Resilience Fund.
Besides the museum project, the two ministers discussed other aspects of cultural collaboration that have been delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This includes the Greece-China Year of Culture and Tourism 2023 many joint actions were planned but did not take place.
However, Greek and Chinese ministries, museums and cultural organizations have already planned joint cultural actions which are expected to take place from the third quarter of 2023 to 2025.
“Relations between our countries are based on mutual respect for the ancient and particularly important cultures developed by our people. The Chinese side’s proposal to lead the ‘Cultural dialogue“The every-two-year program, which did not operate in 2021 and 2022 due to covid restrictions, can only have positive results,” Mendoni said.
The meeting of ministers. Photo source: Ministry of Culture.
For his part, Minister Hu Heping stressed that Greece and China are ancient civilizations that share common characteristics.
“We need to make more efforts to collaborate, and the best way is to further develop our cultural relations,” he said.
The two ministers also discussed the expansion of cooperation in the fight against illegal trafficking and the repatriation of stolen objects, with the organization of a joint scientific conference as part of the Ancient Civilizations Forum.
Furthermore, they discussed the exchange of expertise in the fields of conservation and restoration of antiquities.
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