Given that its countless mosques, madrasas, churches, bazaars, caravanserais, city gates and citadels have been particularly affected, Aleppo’s Old City is a focal point of condition documentation efforts. In view of the dimensions of this task, the Gerda Henkel Stiftung has, since 2017, supported an important side-project of the Syrian Heritage Archive Project, which documents the destruction of historical monuments in the Old City and catalogues its structures.
The project also aims to make national and international media aware of the importance of these monuments. In cooperation with UNESCO, it is making materials available for their reconstruction.
Each entry in the catalogue focuses on a building in the old city of Aleppo, looking at the following:
- Photos showing the monuments before 2011, based on the Syrian Heritage Archive Project’s digital database.
- Reports and materials on the damage assessment of monuments from the side-project ‘Built Heritage Documentation’ (also funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung)
- Descriptions of the buildings, written from the perspective of art or architectural history by residents of Aleppo and international art historians
- The social and urban historical background
- Aleppo residents’ memories of these buildings and their surroundings in the form of texts, recordings, and films
- Detailed documents, drawings, and plans of the buildings
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