“Every hundred years a creature called Melina is born. But if you think about it, our own Melina was the perfect example of a woman who could grow and blossom in every age, responding to the mirror of her time.

She was beautiful and fearless.

She was esthete, bourgeois and unconventional.

She was brave for what she believed greatly and submissive to what she loved greatly.

She was in love all her life with life and lived a hundred lives in one life and each one separately,” Lina Mendoni stated.

Thirty years after her death, the Ministry of Culture and the Melina Mercouri Foundation commemorate and honour the wonderful Greek woman, the politician who put culture at the centre of her policy, the Minister of Culture who urgently and globally demanded the return of the Parthenon Marbles. Since then, this has been Greece’s national demand. The Marbles must shine under the Greek light.