Download PDF | Michael J.K. Walsh (editor)_ Tamás Kiss (editor)_ Nicholas Coure - The Harbour of all this Sea and Realm_ Crusader to Venetian Famagusta (Central European University Press,2014).
272 Pages
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The editors would like to thank the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore for funding the conference Historic Famagusta: A Millennium in Words and Images, and the Centre for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Central European University in Budapest for hosting it. Our thanks go to the delegates who made a considerable effort to travel to Hungary and then submitted their papers for this volume on time.
The editors also wish to thank Dan Frodsham for agreeing to premiere his documentary The Forty: Saving the Forgotten Frescoes of Famagusta at the conference. Thanks also to the Bibliothéque nationale de France for permission to reproduce Relatione di tutto il successo di Famagosta... 1572: le plan du siege on the cover of this book, and to the staff and editors at CEU Press who brought this collection into being, in particular to the copy editor, Frank Schaer, for his very careful and thorough revision of the text. On a personal note Michael Walsh would like to thank the growing number of committed individuals who have taken the history and future of Famagusta to their hearts and channeled their expertise and enthusiasm into its welfare. He would also like to thank his family for being there, consistently, to support this endeavour. Tamas Kiss wishes to thank Agnes Kévesdi for never losing faith in him and in the success of this or any project he has ever undertaken. Nicholas Coureas wishes to thank his wife and children for putting up uncomplainingly with Famagusta as an adoptive member of the family on two distinct occasions.
INTRODUCTION
Michael J. K. Walsh
The scale of preserving the remaining historic elements of Famagusta is of such enormous proportions that one almost does not know where to begin. There can be little doubt that the Historic Walled city of Famagusta is a first-rate historic site and one that ultimately should be listed as a World Heritage Site. It is hoped that a new interim status in the UNESCO designation system can be formulated, but it is likely that until the current political situation is resolved, little can be done for most of the structures...It is therefore of vital importance to increase the world’s awareness of the special qualities of Famagusta and to lay the necessary ground work for an appropriate evolution of the city from an isolated gem to an accessible, well protected, historic urban site.
The powerful words in the epigraph were written by inspectors from the USbased World Monuments Fund (hereafter: WMF) who visited Famagusta after the Historic Walled City was placed on its international Watch List of Endangered Sites in 2008. Six years after these words were written however little has changed as, for the same political reasons, Famagusta remains ineligible to apply for UNESCO World Heritage Site status, and cannot realistically implement a workable Master Plan without external support.* In 2010, the year the city was listed by WMF for a second time, a tantalizing glimpse of what the future might hold was offered by a European Union funded United Nations Development Program—Partnership For the Future (UNDPPFF) project entitled Study for Cultural Heritage in Cyprus. This was a major undertaking to create an inventory of cultural heritage sites throughout Cyprus, and was particularly important for the Walled City of Famagusta as the organizers, from the outset, created an entire subcategory for it alone.
The resultant report listed 250 individual structures within (and including) the walls, all of which were identified, ranked, reviewed, assessed and prepared for inclusion on a Web Based Geographic Information System. Of these, approximately thirty were singled out for a more comprehensive technical assessment and for priority treatment. These well-meaning recommendations remain in suspended animation because the political climate required to implement them is not yet a reality. The report itself remains unpublished. Grand schemes, it seems, are not serving Famagusta well and so any conservation efforts must remain, for the foreseeable future, piecemeal, short-term and reactive. With this in mind I am writing the Introduction to focus specifically on what can be done, indeed what has been done, rather than to dwell on the all-too-familiar list of reasons why Famagusta remains out of reach.
The Harbour of this Sea and Realm is derived from one such initiative which brought together an international team of leading scholars on Famagusta’s history and cultural legacy in Budapest. The gathering, entitled Historic Famagusta: A Millennium in Words and Images, was organized by The School of Art, Design and Media (ADM) at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (hereafter: NTU) and The Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies (CEMS) at Central European University. The organizers’ intention was to create a platform on which historians, art historians, and literary scholars could share their research on textual and visual representations of Famagusta between the final decade of the twelfth century and independence in 1960. In so doing, moreover, they would also facilitate a sophisticated interdisciplinary dialogue to broaden academic perspectives on its cultural and material legacy. In some ways it was a sequel to the inaugural meeting which had taken place in Paris in 2008, and from which Medieval and Renaissance Famagusta (Ashgate, 2012) resulted.
Even if gatherings of this nature serve to keep the debate on Famagusta’s history alive they contribute little by way of affording actual protection for its fragile and precious remains, something that with the passage of time becomes an ever more pressing necessity. The pilot scheme to undertake Famagusta’s first mural stabilization — funded by NTU, WME, and the Famagusta Municipality — therefore represented a giant leap forward when it took place in 2012. The church itself had been the subject of an international project from 2008 which declared it safe for re-use, but the paintings within it had gone undocumented and no provision for their welfare had been considered.‘ In an article on these very images published in 2007 I had signed off rather pessimistically, singling out the exquisite fifteenth century sinopia titled The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste and concluding:
In its present state, however, it is vulnerable and therefore requires the creation of a sophisticated and regulated research and conservation environment.”> A year later the preliminary field report submitted to the WMF warned much more directly: “The painting is fragile, and the plaster is unsecured (without protective edgings), leaving it vulnerable to further loss.”¢ In 2010 a further warning about Famagusta’s murals was reported back to New York saying: “The condition of wall paintings and historic plasters is generally bad or very bad. Severe lack of stability can be identified throughout, calling for urgent and timely intervention.”” The subsequent programme of intervention / consolidation conducted in the summer of 2012, left the painting secure for the foreseeable future as Werner Schmid’s end-of-season report explains in detail and as Dan Frodsham’s meticulous documentary The Forty: Saving Famagusta’s Forgotten Frescoes illustrates.* (Fig. 1)
Just as importantly, the project and its outcomes set an important precedent for future work in Famagusta: reminding us of the enormity of the potential artistic and historical losses the city faces, endorsing the oft-made requests for high quality intervention / conservation, reiterating the need for future projects of a similar nature, and demonstrating that emergency conservation work can in fact be done. The sceptic might feel that the conservation of a single painting is not an impressive return on the effort and money invested, but such critics may not fully appreciate the difficulties of working in Famagusta nor understand the broader implications that the success of the project suggest.
Simultaneously another Singapore-based project started at St. George of the Greeks, where art historians collaborated closely with graphics programmers and 3D modellers to create a virtual space based on an academically sound knowledge of the ruined cathedral (Fig. 2). The goals of this non-invasive assessment were to: document the endangered monument, develop techniques for visualization, and create a 3D model in a scholarly manner. The results were published in 2014.? It is now crystal-clear that heritage studies have moved into the digital age: they can traverse borders (especially relevant for Famagusta), create supra-national networks and offer academic expe- riences to a wider, better informed, and more engaged audience than ever before. The potential for Famagusta is breathtaking. In the future, might an accurate, interactive, virtual reconstruction be made of the entire historic city for use in the “global classroom”?
The next stage of the NTU/WMF/Famagusta Municipality collaboration began in 2013 and focused on the Armenian Church of Famagusta, concentrating in particular on the stabilization of the endangered centuries-old-frescoes therein. This work was interdisciplinary in nature: it involved the efforts of art historians and conservators, education specialists, laser scanning and virtual mapping experts, academics developing augmented reality and image recognition techniques, chemists, film-makers, scientists researching the effects of seismic activity on historic structures, and scholars involved in the refinement of the ever-emergent discipline of ‘citizen science’.
Additionally an oral history component was devised to emphasize that these monuments were living spaces until recently and should therefore receive relevant scholarly treatment as such. Other academics and industry professionals were encouraged to think of the church, and the city, as a laboratory in which to theorize the development of Heritage Science as a complex system, and to strategize management alternatives to the elusive UNESCO World Heritage inscription. The fieldwork is due to be completed towards the end of 2014 and will be published shortly thereafter. The exquisite Armenian Church of Famagusta is a powerful illustration of what can be done, despite all other considerations.
In conclusion, it is my hope that this book, in some very small way, shall reach out to encourage those who continue to strive to understand, appreciate and protect Famagusta’s heritage. Furthermore, I also hope that it shall impel those who have dismissed the city as being beyond help to reconsider. Can the essays in this collection fire the historical imagination, take steps to engender universal and trans-generational cultural empathy, and stimulate important probing questions about heritage management not only in Famagusta but in sites similarly adrift in other unrecognized states? That was, and is, the intention. Finally, as this manuscript goes to press, I note with guarded but nonetheless real optimism that a renewed UN brokered, and EU endorsed, series of reunification talks have begun in Cyprus. Might there, this time, be reason to hope for a brighter future for the historic monuments of Famagusta.
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