"The real life of Athens is here" - look beyond the Acropolis for the city's hidden gems

This is the most exclusive lost and found office in the world. Deep underground, in a vibrant, humid laboratory, a world historic statue is reunited with its ancient marble foot. Of all the rooms in the Acropolis Museum in Athens, this is the most moving, which is saying something considering that the building houses treasures from antiquity, including friezes from the Parthenon.

Professor Nikolaos Stampolidis, general director of the museum, plays the role of an archaeological prince charming: he must decide if the skillfully chiseled toes correspond to the sculpture of a < em>kouros, or young nude on display as part of the permanent collection until conservationists began to suspect that the foot bone connected to the leg bone might be the Wrong. Perhaps the foot in the laboratory, which was found elsewhere in the Acropolis, will fit perfectly. If museum staff are correct, these puzzle pieces, separated for millennia, were within square meters of each other.

This is not the first time the kouros have needed the care of Stampolidis and his team. He points to parts of the statue, where the clotted cream-coloured marble, weathered by age, gives way to sections of plaster that are so shiny...