The thirteenth century Buddhist monastery of Itum Bahal and the Teku Thapatali Monument Zone at the confluence of the Bagmati and Vishnumati rivers in Nepal were placed on World Monument Fund’s list of the 100 Most Endangered Sites in 1996, 2000, and 2002 due to increasing pressure...Read more
Following the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara selected the Havana Country Club as the site for a series of National Art Schools, educating students of ballet, modern dance, music, and the dramatic and plastic arts. The architects Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garatti and Roberto Gottardi...Read more
Private trusts such as the United Kingdom’s National Trust have been effective tools for local preservation, though they are also capable of accomplishing work on a global scale. Being relatively small, non-governmental organizations, trusts are able to avoid some of the pitfalls of...Read more
Commissioned by King Manuel I in celebration of Vasco da Gama’s 1498 discovery of a lucrative sea route to India, Lisbon’s Jerónimos Monastery is the crowning achievement of Manueline architecture. Built on the site of the Santa Maria hermitage, founded by Prince Henry the Navigator in 1460, the...Read more
Few regions of the world are as steeped in history as Afghanistan, its vast archaeological remains bearing silent witness to all who have come to reap the country’s riches—among them, Greeks, Kushans, Sassanians, and Arabs. Few nations on Earth have ever experienced the political turmoil and...Read more
The Bogd Khan Palace in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, represents a last vestige of a way of court life that had prevailed in Central Asia for centuries, until the brutal Stalinist purges of the 1930s. The residence of the eighth and last Bogd Khan ( Living Buddha), head of state and religious leader of...Read more
In 1585, three Englishmen—William Leeds, Ralph Fitch, and John Newbury— landed on the west coast of India, bearing a letter from Queen Elizabeth I. Her majesty requested that the travelers be “honestly intreated and received,” as a first step toward establishing a “mutual and friendly trafique of...Read more
Set in an idyllic landscape of verdant rolling hills along the banks of the River Suir, the ruins of Athassel Abbey stand as a romantic symbol of Ireland’s legendary past. Dedicated to St. Edmund, the abbey was founded in 1192 by William Fitz Aldem de Burgo, a Norman aristocrat, for the Augustinian...Read more
It is astonishing to find that in a nation where culture is so publicly revered, an ancient tradition could persist seemingly in isolation, in a world hidden from view. Such is the case with a devout group of Buddhist nuns who for more than a millennium have endowed and maintained a suite of...Read more
The hutongs are being bull-dozed!” “The hutongs are being bull-dozed!” Why the hue and cry? What is a hutong? And why are these “whatevers” being plowed under? For more than six centuries, the hutongs—the thousands of small lanes and narrow passages lined with courtyard houses and commercial...Read more