Ten years ago, almost 450 architects from around the world took part in a contest to design a long-awaited museum at the Acropolis. The plan was the centrepiece of Greek efforts to retrieve the Elgin marbles, currently in the British Museum in London, but the way the competition was handled - and the "supermarket-like" design produced by the Italian firm that won it - sparked an Olympian row.
This week Greeks don't know whether to laugh or cry: the discovery of a staggering array of ancient finds at the Athens site has forced the government to go back to the drawing board, deeming the winning design inappropriate for a location littered with early Christian relics.
The artefacts "are not as glorious as those of the golden age but they are testimony to a significant and little understood period in the history of this city," said Culture Minister Ms Elizavet Papazoe. "As a result, we will go ahead with a new international architectural competition that I hope to announce in the next six weeks. It's our duty to see that the museum is completed by 2004, when Athens holds the Olympic Games."
The relics, from the late Hellenistic period to the mid-Byzantine era, include the remains of houses, roads, workshops, bathhouses and a basilica-like hall, from what archaeologists say was a vibrant community. Aqueducts, lamps, mosaic floors and hundreds of sculptural fragments have also been uncovered.
The £170 million museum will replace a much smaller one that nestles next to the Parthenon.
Successive Greek governments have rested their campaign to win back from the British Museum the marbles Lord Elgin carried off two centuries ago on their ability to provide the treasures with a state-of-the-art home.
"The new museum will have a special room waiting to house the marbles," said Ms Papazoe. "We are not asking for anything else. The marbles are an exception and their restitution remains a constant cultural priority."
Many architects are breathing a sigh of relief that the discovery of the relics has forced a rethink on the museum plan. Several leading figures had criticised the Italian design as second-rate. They wrote to Mrs Papazoe's predecessor: "Its interior resembles a department store or supermarket rather than a museum. It is hard to think of anything more inappropriate for the Parthenon marbles than this design."
Now that the government agrees with that verdict, architects are praying that the new competition will lay the foundations for a more modest building; one that will not "antagonise" the Acropolis and its treasures.
"I cannot think of any other building anywhere else that has had such an absurd history," sighed Mr Angelos Gavalas, who heads the Greek Architects' Association. "Building so near the Acropolis was always ridiculous because the ground is obviously full of treasures. We've been saying it for years but nobody cared to listen."