From the town of Tripiti, below Plaka, there is a road leading to the colorful fishing harbor of Klima. If you follow this road and take a small detour, you'll pass the remains of an ancient city wall, and just below, under an olive tree, you'll find a sign telling the story of the discovery of the famous statue, the Venus de Milo, or rather, Aphrodite of Milo. Aphrodite was the name of the Greek goddess of love, while Venus was her Roman counterpart. It was here she was discovered on a spring day in 1820 by a farmer plowing his field. The farmer immediately alerted the French proconsul on Milos, Louis Brest, who rushed to the site with two naval officers from the corvette "l’Estafette," Olivier Voutier and Jules Dumont d'Urville. The corvette happened to be in the harbor of Milos at the time. The Frenchmen recognized the significance of the artwork and purchased it from the farmer on behalf of the French embassy in Constantinople. But complications arose. While the Frenchmen traveled to Constantinople to notify the ambassador, a man named Nicholas Mourousi managed to overturn the deal so that the statue could be shipped to the art-loving prince in Constantinople instead of to France. However, just as the statue was about to be loaded onto a Turkish ship, the French, who had just returned from Constantinople, managed to snatch it from the hands of the Turkish crew. With the help of the city's leading citizens, they had the sale to Mourousi annulled. The statue was immediately loaded onto the corvette "l’Estafette," which set course for France, where it was placed in the Louvre museum in Paris, where it remains to this day. Mourousi was furious and retaliated by having the leading citizens fined. But that wasn't enough—he also had them whipped, a Turkish form of punishment at the time. Milos was still under Ottoman rule.
There is a faithful replica of the Venus de Milo in the Archaeological Museum in Plaka, at the National Museum in Oslo, and probably in several other places around the world. The statue originally had arms, and what happened to them remains a mystery. When the statue was found, it was reportedly without arms. They may have been lying nearby under a thick layer of soil. According to d'Urville, one of the officers from "l’Estafette," both arms were intact when the statue was transported from Milos. "The right hand was raised, holding an apple, while the left held the drapery at hip level," he claimed. Regardless of the truth, the torso is considered one of the world's most iconic works of art, and the entire art world was thrilled when the discovery became known. It was initially believed to have been created by the famous sculptor Praxiteles, who lived in the 4th century BC, but upon closer investigation, it was determined that the work was crafted by the Greek sculptor Alexandros of Antioch and made sometime between 130 and 100 BC.
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