Greek Culture Minister Pavlos Geroulanos resigned Friday after masked armed robbers stole more than 60 ancient objects of “incalculable” value, including a gold ring, from a museum in Olympia. Sixty-eight objects were whisked from a museum dedicated to the ancient Olympic Games after two masked men immobilised the museum’s sole female guard as she arrived for her early morning shift, officials said. The police said “bronze and clay objects and a gold ring” had been removed from display cases at the museum, a former hotel built on a forested hilltop on the outskirts of the small town of Olympia. “There were two of them, and they had a gun,” Olympia Mayor Thymios Kotzias told Flash Radio. “They immobilised the guard as the shift changed at 7am (0500 GMT), having previously knocked out the alarm,” he said. “We must wait and see what the local archaeology supervisor will say, but the items were of incalculable value,” Kotzias said. He later told state television NET: “Clearly the museum’s security was insufficient… to guard a global treasure.” A ministry unionist said museums nationwide were over 1,500 guards short of a full complement after over two years of layoffs imposed by the government in the entire public sector to address the country’s worst debt crisis in decades. “All museums have suffered cuts, both in guards and archaeologists, the staff are no longer enough to operate at full shifts,” said Ioanna Frangou, general secretary of the union of short-term culture ministry staff. The government said Geroulanos had submitted his resignation over the incident, but it had not been immediately accepted by Prime Minister Lucas Papademos. The minister rushed to the museum, some 300 kilometres (186 miles) southwest of Athens in the Peloponnese peninsula, the semi-state Athens News Agency said. Olympia, birthplace of the ancient Olympic Games, is visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.
