An AFP report (via Yahoo) on what's up and what's coming down at the Acropolis:

Ongoing restoration work on the Acropolis will be completed on schedule, and all scaffolding currently encumbering the ancient citadel will be removed by 2006, Greek archaeologists supervising the project have said.

"The Acropolis works...are proceeding rapidly," Acropolis Restoration Service (YSMA) director Maria Ioannidou told an annual conference on the project's progress Monday.

"According to (our) plans, the current works will be completed at the end of 2006," she said.

Last month, Greece's culture ministry said it was considering an appeal for private investor funds to help speed up the Acropolis conservation effort, which has dragged on for 30 years.

Despite spending over 30.6 million euros since 1975 on restoring the World Heritage Acropolis site, the ministry said that 16 more years and some 70 million euros in additional funds would be needed to complete the work at the going pace.

Ioannidou insisted Monday that her service will meet the 2006 deadline provided that it receives funding which the culture ministry has delayed paying.

"The 2020 completion date reported by the media concerns future projects that have yet to begin," added Haralambos Bouras, chairman of the culture ministry's Committee for the Preservation of the Acropolis Monuments (ESMA).

YSMA is halfway through reassembling the various Acropolis monuments either partly or wholly taken apart for restoration, including the 5th century BC Parthenon and the Temple of Athena Nike, Ioannidou said.

Nearly 1,000 structural parts from the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena Nike and the Erechtheion have been restored, and 470 of them have been repositioned, along with over 1,000 pieces of broken marble masonry which were returned to their original locations, she said.

The process took longer than originally planned because of the "unexpected" deterioration found in the monuments' marble, which added two years and 5.5 million euros to the project, Bouras said.

Restorers have also been collecting and filing small marble fragments spread across the Acropolis site.

While poking around for earlier articles (I could have sworn I read as some point that the scaffolding was supposed to be down in time for the Olympics), I came across this very nice 'digitally corrected' photo ... (a larger one is available).