The Ancient City of Aleppo
In December 2018, UNESCO and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research Operational Satellite Application Programme (UNITAR-UNOSAT) published Five Years of Conflict: The State of Cultural Heritage in the Ancient City of Aleppo, the first comprehensive account of the devastation wrought by the conflict on heritage in the Syrian Arab Republic. Using satellite images, which allowed for sites in otherwise inaccessible areas to be viewed for the first time since the start of the conflict, UNESCO’s cultural heritage experts worked closely with imagery analysts from UNITAR-UNOSAT, as well as historians, architects and archaeologists, to analyse the images, finding that more than 10 per cent of the historic buildings of Aleppo have been completely destroyed and more than half have suffered severe to moderate damage.
A second publication, assessing the state of all Syrian properties on the World Heritage List, as well on the country’s Tentative List, is scheduled for 2019.
Ancient City of Aleppo
Located at the crossroads of several trade routes from the 2nd millennium B.C., Aleppo was ruled successively by the Hittites, Assyrians, Arabs, Mongols, Mamelukes and Ottomans.
The Minaret of Jam
New technologies were also employed to safeguard cultural heritage in Afghanistan in 2018. The Minaret of Jam is believed to have been built between 1163 and 1203 during the reign of the Ghurid sovereign Ghyias-ud-Din. Its isolated position in Ghor Province, Afghanistan, at the confluence of the Hari Rud and Jam Rud rivers, may have helped protect it over the centuries, but it also makes conservation and maintenance challenging.
September 2017, UNESCO experts, along with Afghan officials from the Ministry of Information and Culture, carried out the first thorough survey of the inner and outer portions of the minaret, along with a general survey of the area, using drone technology. Video footage was published in February 2018, allowing the world to see the state of one of Afghanistan’s most fragile heritage sites.
