While five sites cannot adequately represent all of WMF’s work in the field, those we have chosen share several themes of great importance to WMF. They represent extraordinary past achievements, have the potential for greater community benefit and engagement, and intrigue residents and visitors who...Read more
The last permanent slave market in East Africa was in Zanzibar (Tanzania) and was closed in 1873. In 1879, British missionaries built Christ Church Cathedral at the site, and today it is the most significant marker of what occurred at that place. Zanzibar’s tropical climate took its toll on the...Read more
This annual report chronicles some of the high points and milestones of World Monuments Fund, focusing on the themes and issues that underlie our current work and our selection of projects: sharing knowledge through training, addressing catastrophe and the rising specter of human conflict, and...Read more
Qusayr ‘Amra is a magnificent bathhouse locat¬ed in the eastern badiya (steppe) of Jordan, 50 miles east of Amman along the road to Azraq. Currently, both natural and man-made factors threaten the site, requiring urgent action for its long-term, sustainable conservation, investigation, and man...Read more
Among the Batammaliba of Togo, the word butabu describes a process of moistening earth with water in preparation for building - the prefix and siffix bu referring to the earth and all that is associated with it. Wet earth construction is a complex art based on a sound knowledge of structure and the...Read more
In the old days of the Venetian Republic, the doge would board his golden barge on Ascension Day to be rowed out beyond the lagoon into the waters of the Adriatic. There, he would throw a consecrated ring into the sea, saying “Desponsamus te, mare,” (We wed thee, O sea). On the night of 3 November...Read more
This past December, two extraordinary mid-eighteenth-century lead sculp - tures from the historic Portuguese pal - ace of Queluz (see ICON, Spring 2004) returned to their native London where they are undergoing a dramatic restora - tion at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Cast by renowned British...Read more
An extraordinary polychromed relief recently found within the Temple of the Moon—a massive ceremonial complex on Peru’s arid North Coast—is providing a window into the ceremonial life of the Moche, whose culture flourished in the early first millennium a.d in the many river valleys that crisscross...Read more
Described by the architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as the greatest neoclassical building in the world, St. George’s Hall in Liverpool, England, had been a source of civic pride since its construction in the mid-nineteenth century, housing the city’s law courts, along with a town hall and...Read more
The 2014 World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize was awarded to the Finnish Committee for the Restoration of Viipuri Library with The Central City Alvar Aalto Library in Vyborg on December 1, 2014. This booklet describes the history of the building and the restoration project that saved it,...Read more