The law presents a comprehensive and detailed system of protection of movable and immovable monuments, artifacts, intangible heritage, state ownership of monuments pre-dating 1453 and classification of more recent monuments/artifacts. The concept of cultural heritage is broadened to include all cultural property located in Greece, including immovable monuments and sites, movable cultural objects and intangible heritage. Also, the concept of protection is broadened to cover, in particular, the identification, research, documentation, access and social, aesthetic and educational use of cultural heritage, in addition to its physical conservation and preservation. Different degrees of protection are granted to different categories of cultural heritage objects, e.g. movable and immovable objects before 1453 AD and all immovable monuments before 1830 AD, have the highest level of protection.
Law 3028/2002 “On the Protection of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage in general” integrated the fundamental principles of the 1970 Convention which was ratified by Law 1103/1980 and it introduced the prohibition of illicit import of foreign cultural goods.
Provisions of the law 3028/2002 are codified by the law 4858/2021.
