Ugly things happen in war. In the midst of the nightmare of violence that is Iraq, other tragedies are continuing—ones that are largely unknown to the general public. Destruction of archaeological and cultural sites, of monuments and antiquities is continuing at a furious pace. Weighed in the...Read more
Fresco and mural conservation specialists are a brave, frighteningly knowledgeable, and slightly geeky elite, traveling the world studying painted walls and trying to keep maximum amounts of original pigment adhering. Over the past decade, the arsenal of high-tech tools and chemicals for analysis...Read more
The year was 1973 and art historian Pablo Macera had heard from an artisan, Hilario Mendívil, about the existence of extraordinary mural paintings within a suite of churches south of the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco. Following up on the tip, he embarked on a journey to see them first hand. So...Read more
On November 1, 2001, St. John’s Anglican Church caught fire and was nearly destroyed. Located in Lunenburg, a Nova Scotian town with UNESCO World Heritage status, the congregation held a vote about the future of the church and decided to restore it. After collecting funds from their...Read more
Exurban development on the farmland adjacent to the city of Lexington, KY threatens one of America’s great cultural landscapes. Since the 1960’s, population growth has outpaced the provision of urban services, contributing to the construction of subdivisions and shopping malls...Read more
The noonday sun beams down on us as our lanchero, Gabriel Maldonado, artfully slips our boat between boulders and raging whirlpools. It is the last patch of class II whitewater we will encounter before reaching the 1,500-year-old Maya city of Piedras Negras, the remains of which blanket a two-...Read more
A distinguished architectural critic and writer, ICON contributing editor Colin Amery has been director of WMF in Britain for nearly a decade. Now, as he hands over the reins of chief executive of our British affiliate to noted architectural historian and host of the popular BBC archaeology program...Read more
An extraordinary altarpiece and several stone funerary monuments within the fifteenth-century monastery church of Santa María de Miraflores in Burgos have just been unveiled following a two-year WMF-sponsored restoration. Located in northwestern Spain, the Cartuja (or Carthusian monastery) de Santa...Read more
Few Watch listings have prompted so much outrage in a nation’s national press as WMF’s inclusion of the Roman aqueduct in Segovia, Spain, on its 2006 list of 100 Most Endangered Sites. The listing also revealed the problems that can arise when municipalities, regional governments, ministries of...Read more
I first came in contact with the International Fund for Monuments—as it was then called—in Venice. The great flood of November 3–5, 1966 was still a recent and terrible memory. The waters had risen to well over two meters above their normal level and had remained there for more than 24 hours,...Read more