Documentation and damage prevention in conflict areas : the Acheiropoietos monastery, Cyprus

The analysis of the Aχειροποίητος monastery shows the superimposition of different buildings: a domed church with a central plan, built in late Byzantine times over the ruins of an early Christian basilica, enlarged by the addition of three successive narthexes, and therefore transformed into a longitudinal basilica. The name Aχειροποίητος, literally “made without hands”, referred to a sacred icon hosted therein. A walled enclosure surrounds the church and contains the monastery, which developed in subsequent phases, with different additions, demolitions and restorations. We outlined the formation process of the complex, from the VI cent. Basilica, to the transformation of the monastery into military barracks in the 1970, as a premise for the restoration project. Recently the Department of Antiquities assigned the monastery to the Girne American University for its restoration and it is urgent to accomplish some restorations. The management of this site, hence the political situation of northern Cyprus, represents an interesting case study on the contested heritage issue. Nevertheless, the heritage management in Cyprus, for the complex political situation of the island, bears more difficulties than in other UE countries, but we should consider that every heritage site has someway a contested character. An architectural project was experimented, according to the typo-morphological approach of the Muratorian Italian School, based on the principle that new buildings should be the continuation of the old ones, without imitating them, but following their formation process, as the last step of an ongoing process. We did not conceive the new architecture as an object contrasting with the context, but following the full understanding of the processual transformations of the site, it was possible to design the new addition to the monastic building as a living organism, in conformity with the sacred context.