All Posts

Currently, there are 91 Nationally Selected Important Preservation Districts in Japan where groups of traditional buildings are protected. Among them, six districts were affected by the earthquake.

Sustainable Tourism is an important element of WMF’s work and a critical message around the world as heritage sites balance protecting fragile, historic materials and providing a safe and pleasant experience for tourists. High tourist season at Angkor brought some unexpected problems to ongoing conservation at Phnom Bakheng, one of the oldest temples in Angkor Archaeological Park. Hordes of tourists disregarded barriers, multilingual warning signs, and guards, climbing onto and over delicate brick shrines, a fragile stone wall, and approached active work areas to have a view of the sunset.

While not well visited by foreigners, this isolation is one of the reasons Japanese treasure this area—rural, agricultural, isolated— “the old Japan” —not only scenically, but in terms of the agrarian pace of life and a real landscape of snow covered mountains and trees that we see as we whisk by in our car.

In December I visited Stobi, an archaeological site that is included on the 2012 World Monuments Watch. My hosts were Silvana Blaževska, the director of National Institution Stobi, and Goce Pavlovski, a staff archaeologist who gave me an information-packed tour of the ancient city.