Ever since the early 19th century, when Thomas Bruce, seventh earl of Elgin, sawed off and crowbarred many of the carvings that ringed the top of the Parthenon and sold them to the British Museum to dodge bankruptcy, the British have been sharply polarized over whether Britain or Greece has the right to these sculptures. For many liberals and radicals, beginning with Lord Byron, Elgin was a vandal who had committed sacrilege. Yet others maintained that he’d acquired the marbles legally, and even that he’d rescued them from inevitable neglect under the Ottoman empire.

In December, The Guardian reported that talks between the Greek government and the British Museum over the potential return of the Parthenon marbles were “well advanced.” Although a final agreement isn’t imminent, this development is significant. Negotiations have been under way for some time, built around an extended loan of the sculptures to Athens in return for the temporary transfer of some Greek treasures to Britain. The Starmer administration is more amenable to a final agreement than the previous government (though it won’t budge on a law that forbids the permanent removal of British Museum artifacts). After nearly two centuries of bitter but worthless wrangling, one of the longest-running cultural quarrels in Europe might soon be entering its epilogue.

For a long time, I was uncertain of my position on this question. On the one hand, it is a plain fact that imperialist powers have dispossessed many nations of much of their cultural patrimony. The present distribution of treasures in museums across the world reflects the global inequality in wealth and power—in favor of Europe and North America. So campaigns for repatriation of these objects are regarded as attempts to redress this imbalance, allowing the formerly colonized to reclaim their rightful property.

Many Greeks believe that this applies to them, too. Their argument is that the marbles are the property of the Greek nation, which freed itself from the Ottoman empire in 1832 after centuries of being its vassal. This seems self-evidently true—until you consider the British Museum’s counterargument, which is that there is great value in the encyclopedic museum: a place where the heritage of many ancient civilizations can be seen, emphasizing the interconnectedness of humanity. In this framing, returning the marbles would be reactionary and nationalist; retaining them is progressive and cosmopolitan. Similar debates have shot through the many battlefronts of the culture wars, such as identity politics and the debate over what books belong in the canon. Does art belong to all of humanity, or is it fundamentally rooted in the particular culture in which it was produced?

Christopher Hitchens, among the most eloquent and forceful advocates of rejoining the Parthenon marbles, helped tilt me toward the cause of repatriation. With great timing, Verso Books has just reissued his slim book The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification. One of the earliest polemics by the notoriously pugilistic cultural critic, who died in 2011, it was originally published in 1987 under the title Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles and reissued once before, in 2008, under its current title. The renaming accorded with changing times (referring to the “Elgin marbles” was no longer politically correct); it also revealed a subtle evolution in the point that Hitchens wished to stress: namely, the aesthetic case for reattachment.

[Read: Behind a centuries-old international feud over marbles]

Hitchens’s dedication to this cause wasn’t merely due to a romantic philhellenism rooted in the classical British-private-school curriculum; his life was intertwined with the Hellenic world. As a young socialist and internationalist in the 1970s, he had written and spoken against the Greek military junta that had persecuted his fellow leftists. The independence of Cyprus was among his precious causes, alongside self-determination for the Kurds and the Palestinians—who had long been victims of occupation and imperialist power games. His first wife was a Greek Cypriot, and, as he noted movingly in his memoir Hitch-22, his mother died by suicide in a hotel room overlooking the Acropolis, amid a 1973 anti-junta student uprising. The cause of the Parthenon marbles was therefore both personal and political, emblematic “of a long and honourable solidarity between British liberals and radicals and the cause of a free and independent Greece,” as he wrote in the introduction to the 2008 edition.

And yet he makes his case for repatriating the works almost exclusively on artistic grounds. The argument is simple and, as Hitchens put it, “unanswerable.” One of the great monuments of world culture—a temple garlanded with masterful carvings—the Parthenon was designed by Phidias to celebrate the glory of Athens. Its friezes depict a procession of gods, warriors, and mythical animals; its metopes, single panels within the larger frieze, narrate mythological battles of the Athenians against the Amazonians and the Centaurs, alluding to the Greco-Persian wars. Most of these scenes were—and remain—amputated, disfigured, and scattered. For instance, the body of the goddess Iris is now in London, while her head is in Athens. Poseidon’s front torso is in Athens, the rear part in London. The cavalcade of galloping horsemen is crudely fragmented across several nations. The repair of this travesty, to the extent that it is possible, so that it can be aesthetically appreciated as a united whole, is long overdue.

Many of the anti-unification arguments Hitchens faced in the 1980s have aged badly—chief among them the assertion that Athens won’t be an adequate home for them because of instability, pollution, and a lack of infrastructure. Today it feels patronizing, because it is so obvious, to point out that Greece has been a stable modern democracy for more than 50 years, and that the state-of-the-art Acropolis Museum, opened in 2009, has proved that the Greeks are not just worthy, but superb custodians of their antiquity. Reattaching the marbles to the fragile ruins of the temple, whose roof was blown off by the Venetians in 1687, would be impossible. But within this spacious museum building, visible from the Acropolis, the reunited marbles would be protected against the elements, accessible to visitors, and mounted in the original order on a scale model of the Parthenon’s upper portion.

One retentionist argument, however, has endured, and it is of the slippery-slope variety: that reuniting the marbles will set off an avalanche of claims that every ancient artifact be returned to its land of origin, which together will abolish the very idea of the cosmopolitan museum. Hitchens once dismissed this line of reasoning as the “old last-ditch standby of the bureaucrat.” For one, he wrote sardonically, “there are no Assyrians, Hittites or Babylonians to take up the cry of ‘precedent.’”  

Yet in the years following Hitchens’s death, this charge has accrued some credibility. European and American museums have been beset by campaigns to “decolonize” them. Some pieces, such as the Benin bronzes, ended up in these museums as loot from colonial smash-and-grabs much more brazen than Elgin’s exploits. Hence, the decolonizers argue, museums are symbols of cultural domination. Many of these campaigns have an ethnocentric dimension, in which the volksgeist of the art is placed above its aesthetic virtues. The example of the Benin bronzes represents the potential danger of such campaigns: The government of Nigeria, which encompasses the former kingdom of Benin, overruled a national commission that aimed to house the pieces in a new museum, decreeing instead that all repatriated bronzes are henceforth the personal property of a powerless potentate, the oba of Benin, who can do with them what he will.

[From the October 2022 issue: Who benefits when Western museums return looted art?]

So what makes the Parthenon sculptures different from the bronzes, which were also originally plundered by British colonialists? Can the conclusion that one claim is more valid than the other be ascribed to Western bias?

First, although some of the bronzes were part of a unified work depicting the history and mythology of the kingdom (which was annexed by the British empire in 1897), the majority are stand-alone pieces. People can admire the brilliance of the bracelets and statues as discrete objects whether in London, New York, or Lagos, and perhaps even more so when viewing them in relation to other cultures—because the bronzes themselves were a product of exchange with another culture, the Portuguese. Second, there is no danger of the Parthenon marbles being out of public view. As a general rule, our world’s culture should be accessible to as many people as possible. That means putting it in public museums, rather than the traditional palaces of ceremonial monarchs.

Hitchens was fond of saying of the marbles, “Picture the panel of the Mona Lisa, if it had been sawn in half.” In this hypothetical, any reunification of the Mona Lisa in any museum would do. It needn’t be in Florence, where it was painted. A more apt hypothetical might be: What if, during the British Raj, the dome of the Taj Mahal had been dismantled and detained in the British Museum? This isn’t a flippant analogy; during the Indian mutiny of 1857, British soldiers looted the Taj Mahal, removing rare gems and lapis lazuli. Decades later, Lord Curzon, then viceroy of India, had the good sense to restore it.

Everyone knows what a perversion fragmenting the Taj Mahal would be. We wouldn’t appreciate it with the awe we currently do as the “frozen music” (as Goethe once defined architecture) of Indo-Islamic design. We would be impatient to see what it would look like with its dome reattached—and in Agra, India, for only there can you properly see its marvelous proportions and appreciate the way the marble interacts with the light and the reflecting pools, changing hue depending on the time of day. This nearly magical experience couldn’t be re-created in, say, Manchester.

Whether as a testament to the Athenian enlightenment or Periclean imperialism, the Parthenon is a monument of civilization. For those of us who derive a humanist and democratic ethos from classical Athens, the temple matters greatly. In this sense, the marbles aren’t simply Greek, but belong to all of humanity. The case for reunification has to be made on this cosmopolitan basis. The world deserves to see the story that Phidias intended to tell in whole.

[Read: Christopher Hitchens was fearless]

For decades, Greece has undertaken the painstaking work of conserving and restoring the Parthenon. Of course, the vicissitudes of history have left their irrevocable mark. The temple won’t literally be put back together like it once was; the Byzantines, Venetians, and Ottomans made sure of that. The closest I will ever come to seeing the Parthenon in its original, intact form is by playing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on PlayStation, or visiting the replica Parthenon in Nashville (which is a bit of a Taj Mahal–in–Manchester experience). Nevertheless, thanks to the spacious Acropolis Museum, visitors could see the ruins of the temple and then the Parthenon marbles in the same afternoon. They could also appreciate the irony of the marbles depicting the glories of the Athenians while the temple itself bears the scars of multiple Greek defeats. That visible damage is part of the great and tragic narrative of this wonder, and always will be. And it can be truly appreciated only once the reunification has been accomplished.

Germany and Italy have already returned fragments from the Parthenon to Athens. Britain should do its part, out of an impulse toward restoration in the most generous sense. Hitchens, as he often did, got the tone just right:

“There is still time to make the act of restitution: not extorted by pressure or complaint but freely offered as a homage to the indivisibility of art and—why not say it without embarrassment?—of justice too.”

The museum says capacity is limited, with members and those who already hold tickets given priority.

Only one historic site bears the name of America’s 22nd and 24th president—and it’s no Monticello.

The Grover Cleveland Presidential Library and Museum occupies a one-story building in Caldwell, New Jersey, behind the house where its namesake spent the first few years of his life. The museum is the size of a small living room. A Dunkin’ sits across the street.

The site befits Cleveland’s legacy. He was a large man but not larger than life; his two terms in the White House were most remarkable for the four years that separated them.

Until November 5, Cleveland held the distinction of being the only U.S. president to regain the office after voters turned him out: He won the White House in 1884, lost his reelection bid in 1888, and then won again in 1892. Donald Trump matched Cleveland’s achievement by winning last year’s presidential election, robbing him of his exclusive claim to history but also renewing interest in a president whom time has largely forgotten. The two men share little else in common. Cleveland curtailed government corruption, adhered to a restrictive view of presidential authority, and opposed expansionism; Trump flouts ethical norms left and right, chafes at limits to his power, and wants to buy Greenland. Yet their new bond could reshape Cleveland’s legacy.

A grandson of the former president, George Cleveland, has been fielding calls from reporters and history buffs for months. “Anything that shines a light on a dimmer part of history is a good thing,” he told me. “It’s a Grover Cleveland renaissance!” joked Louis Picone, a historian who sits on the board of the Grover Cleveland Birthplace Memorial Association.

One rainy evening last month, the association gathered in Caldwell—a small town about 20 miles west of New York City—for its annual meeting. The event doubled as a ribbon-cutting for a newly renovated room in the museum that the group is trying to expand. At the moment, the exhibit isn’t much: some photographs, a desk, a chair Cleveland used in the White House.

The event drew a couple dozen people, who listened to Picone deliver a talk on “extraordinary” presidential elections. But he didn’t discuss any of the past three, which weren’t exactly ordinary. Picone mentioned Trump only glancingly and ignored his new connection to Cleveland.

[From the March 1897 issue: Mr. Cleveland as president]

Indeed, Trump is a touchy topic for the keepers of the Cleveland flame, not all of whom are happy to see their guy joined forever in history alongside the 45th and soon-to-be-47th president of the United States. Paul Maloney, the association’s president, politely declined to answer when I asked him how he felt about Cleveland losing his unique distinction. “We have a political figure that I’m trying to keep the politics out of. I know how odd that is,” Maloney told me. “I don’t want anyone to infer any point of view that our organization might have.”

The group’s vice president, Bunny Jenkins, wasn’t as diplomatic: “It had to be Trump?!”

Besides their comeback connection, Cleveland and Trump are about as different from each other as any two presidents. Trump was born into New York wealth; Cleveland was a minister’s son who helped provide for his family after his father’s early death. He was a hard worker and, at times, a hard drinker; Trump abstains from both long hours and alcohol.

Both Cleveland and Trump campaigned as anti-corruption populists, but Cleveland followed through on his commitment to clean government. (His dedication was literal at times: As mayor of Buffalo, New York, he helped construct a modern sewer system for the foul-smelling city.) A Democratic reformer, Cleveland fought Tammany Hall as governor of New York. After he won the presidency in 1884, he insisted on paying his own train fare to Washington, according to a 2022 biography by Troy Senik. He once refused to accept a dog that a supporter sent him as a gift, deeming it inappropriate.

As president, Cleveland developed such a reputation for public integrity that he earned the nickname “Grover the Good.” He curbed the spoils and patronage system that pervaded politics at the time—and that Trump has begun to re-create.

Whereas Trump has repeatedly stretched the bounds of presidential power, Cleveland respected them. He interpreted the president’s constitutional responsibilities narrowly and did not try to whip votes for his agenda in Congress. But within his authority, Cleveland acted aggressively: He vetoed 414 bills during his first term, more than all 21 of his predecessors combined.

Few of the political controversies that Cleveland confronted as president are relevant anymore; the pensions of Civil War veterans and the gold standard were major flashpoints in the late 19th century. But one major fiscal debate has lingered—tariffs—and he and Trump took opposite sides. Cleveland pushed for lower tariffs even though they were popular, a stance that likely cost him his first attempt at winning a second term.

Despite his reputation for good governance, President Cleveland had significant flaws, including ones that much of his 19th-century electorate would have overlooked. He opposed women’s suffrage, and he made virtually no effort to protect Black people in the South from the terror and disenfranchisement of Jim Crow.

Accusations of misconduct in his personal life nearly derailed his first bid for the presidency. A Buffalo newspaper reported that he had fathered a child out of wedlock years earlier with a widow named Maria Halpin. The story alleged that Cleveland hired detectives to abduct Halpin, take the baby, and force Halpin into a mental institution. A few months later, and just before Election Day, the allegations became far worse. According to Senik, Halpin signed an affidavit attesting that Cleveland had “accomplished my ruin by the use of force and violence and without my consent.” Days later, however, Halpin denied her own charges and said she had signed the document without reading it. Cleveland won the election, and his opponents did not bring up the allegations in subsequent campaigns.

Whether or not he assaulted Halpin remains unclear. “The only two people who know are dead,” Picone told me. But historians, including Senik, have generally “given Grover Cleveland the benefit of the doubt” because of his reputation for honesty, Picone said. “It was so out of character,” he said of the allegations. Cleveland did acknowledge, though, that he had been romantically involved with Halpin, and he never denied that he was the father of her child. In 2020, the historian Susan Wise Bauer wrote in The Atlantic that Cleveland had managed to present himself as “the upstanding, hapless victim” in the whole affair, creating a new playbook for politicians accused of sexual misconduct.

[Read: The lessons of 1884]

The Republican Benjamin Harrison beat Cleveland in 1888 thanks in part to Cleveland’s aggressive push to lower tariffs, a position that united the GOP in opposition and divided his own party. “What is the use of being elected or reelected unless you stand for something?” he asked a staffer, according to Senik’s book. Cleveland took his ouster much more gracefully than Trump would more than a century later when he tried to overturn an election. Asked why he lost, Cleveland replied simply, “It was mainly because the other party had the most votes.” Whereas Trump skipped his opponent’s inauguration, Cleveland held an umbrella over Harrison’s head to protect him from the rain as he took the oath of office.

Trump began considering a comeback bid almost as soon as he left the White House in 2021. Cleveland did not, but his wife, Frances Cleveland, had an inkling he might return. As the Clevelands were preparing to leave the White House in early 1889, she told a staffer, “I want to find everything just as it is now, when we come back again.” The confused aide asked when she planned on visiting. “We are coming back just four years from today,” she replied with a smile.

Cleveland’s second inauguration (Library of Congress)

Trump was the first former president in decades to try to return to the White House. But comeback attempts were more common in the 19th century. Cleveland was motivated to run again in part because Harrison had abandoned fiscal constraint, presiding alongside what became known as “the Billion Dollar Congress.” Cleveland won a campaign that drew relatively little interest from the public, but the mark he set—a second, nonconsecutive presidential term—would stand for 132 years.

The Grover Cleveland Birthplace Memorial Association has been trying to build a proper library and museum for decades. New Jersey, which owns the historic site, has agreed to foot most of the bill, but red tape has caused delays. The Cleveland home is still undergoing refurbishments, and the museum won’t fully open to the public for at least another few months. “We’re breaking our backs trying to get this place open,” Dave Cowell, the association’s 86-year-old secretary of the board and former president, told me.

Over the past three decades, visitors to the Cleveland birthplace have grown from about 300 annually to roughly 9,000 a couple years ago, he said. That still pales in comparison to the expansive presidential museums dedicated to Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy, which draw hundreds of thousands of people every year. But Cleveland is gaining on second-tier presidential rivals such as Martin Van Buren, America’s eighth president, whose historic site in New York receives about 13,000 people a year, Cowell said.

The association is planning a grand opening for the museum later this year. Trump will be invited, Picone said. But the group won’t try to leverage the Trump connection for extra attention. No exhibitions examining their new link in history are in the works. It’s just too soon, Paul Maloney told me. “Now, 10 years down the road? Fifteen years down the road? We might think differently.”

As Cleveland’s fans are quick to note, his presidential comeback is just one part of his legacy. His story has receded from national memory largely because his presidency did not coincide with momentous events; the country was not at war, and he did not die in office. Maloney, a retired social-studies teacher, admitted that Cleveland didn’t even make it into his U.S. history curriculum. But, Picone argued, “he was an excellent president.”

That Cleveland’s most famous achievement has now been matched, his grandson George conceded, is a loss. “Nothing lasts forever,” he told me. But he took solace in the thought that Trump’s return to the White House won’t completely erase his grandfather’s record comeback. After all, George said, “he’s still the first.”