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Sulusaray Mayor Halil Demirkol said the ancient city, which has been home to three civilizations, was located in the center of the district.

“After 22 years, excavations started in the ancient city in 2013. This year, 10 houses will be expropriated. Excavation works will continue this year, too. We are waiting for additional funds from the Culture and Tourism Ministry. The Special Provincial District is also supporting the works, too,” Demirkol said.

“The district is located on the site of the ancient city. We want to move it to an area of 500,000 square meters at the entrance of the district. The area has been allocated to Turkey’s Housing Development Administration (TOKİ). People will move to the houses to be built by TOKİ. Their current houses should be immediately expropriated to unearth the historic city beneath. But since the expropriation is a slow and expensive process, we plan to move the settlement to another place,” the mayor said.

Provincial Culture and Tourism Director Abdurrahman Akyüz said the ancient city was very important to Tokat.

“Excavation work was carried out here in the 1990s but it stopped for some reasons. After a 22-year hiatus, excavations started again three years ago and are continuing with the collaboration of Gaziosmanpaşa University, the museum directorate, the  Culture and Tourism Ministry and the Special Provincial Directorate. This is a long-term work. It may take 30-40 years to unearth the ancient city,” Akyüz said.

“Our governor, Cevdet Can, attaches great importance to Sebastopolis. The Prince of Wales, [Charles], visited here in the 1990s. Can sent an invitation letter to him to come to Tokat. This place could become an Ephesus or larger than it,” Akyüz said, referring to the site in İzmir that draws large numbers of tourists every year to its massive theater and library.

“It is believed that it was a rich city because hot springs were located near the places of rich people in the past. There is a hot spring around here. The district should be completely moved from here, and the area should be turned into an excavation site,” he said.

Ancient city of Sebastopolis

The ancient city of Sebastopolis was established in the 1st century B.C. The city was included in the Cappadocia region after being separated from the Pontus Galatius and Polemoniacus states at the time of the Roman Emperor Trajan between 98 and 117 A.D. It was known as one of the five largest cities in the Black Sea region 2,000 years ago because it was located on passageways and because of its thermal sources, which are still being used today.

As an indicator of its wealth at the time of the Roman Empire, Sebastopolis had the authority to print money. Scholars believe that the city lost its importance and was forgotten over time, largely due to big wars, destruction, disasters and changes to passageways.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News [March 19, 2015]

Copyright by smart | Design Aram Dikiciyan
smart urban stage is a global online project dealing with the term FUTURE OF THE CITY. We ask pioneers from metropolises around the world to question the urban status quo. the results are visions, ideas and solutions for sustainable lifestyles, modern social systems and forward-looking developments in the fields of architecture, design and technology. the worldwide event series is exhibiting ideas and solutions of forward thinking future makers. the brand behind this online project is the car manufacturer smart, which hosted special events throughout Europe during the last two years.

VIA Smart’s Future of the City Continues

Bitlis Eren University academic Associated Professor Mehmet Demirtaş said the ancient city was registered by the Culture and Tourism Ministry in 1986.

The ancient city, part of which is underground and part of which is submerged beneath the lake, had all the traces of a city and settlement, Demirtaş said, adding it should be protected from illegal excavators and those who want to use it for commercial purposes.

Demirtaş called for the ministry and the Van Cultural and Natural Heritage Preservation Board to take action. “The region has a history of 5,000 years. Lots of findings from the 3rd century B.C. have been unearthed there so far. There are two ancient cities in the district; one is in Şahmiran village and the other is this one on the coast of the lake. It is known as the ancient city of Tatvan. There are rock-carved niches, geometric shapes and paintings. These are the most common features of an ancient city and they were all registered in 1986.”

Demirtaş said many structures which had been unearthed during previous excavations remained underground because they were not taken under protection.

“[Potential excavation] work will completely unearth the ancient city. This place will be a focus of interest in the world. But there are those who want the area to be zoned for housing and build a holiday village or drill for water. Also, treasure hunters cause a large amount of damage to this area. A common project should be made for its  protection,” he said.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News [March 25, 2015]

I grew up on a farm, spent my teenage years in the suburbs, and now I live in a small city and hope to live in a larger city within in the next couple years. I've done most kinds of living in my 21 years of life, and while I remember my childhood in the country fondly I have to say that I am really into city living. I like city living for a lot of the reasons Edward Glaeser brings up in his book, Triumph of the City, specifically how I do believe it makes us smarter, greener, and healthier. It's no secret that I'm a huge proponent of environmentalism (I co-host an environmental book podcast and just started a new feature about environmental books here), and while I do love nature, I recognize that the best thing environmentalists can do for their environment is to live in an urban environment. As Glaeser points out, the common misconception is that being good to the environment means living in nature, being one with it, and all of that stuff. But as I can testify as someone who has lived in rural and suburban environments, "being one with nature" means hurting nature faster. You drive more, longer distances, and more frequently when you live further away from places you need to be. Places like the store, your job, and entertainment establishments.

Luckily, Glaeser is not too hard on the people who live in suburban environments. He even succumbed to the glory of them himself, leaving the city for burbs once he settled down with a family. Glaeser recognizes that it's not so much the people living the suburbs that are the problem, it's a lack of appropriate policies across that country keeping cities from growing. This often makes rents in cities high, forcing more people to move out of the city and into the burbs where it is cheaper for them to buy a home even if they are forced to drive to work every day. Which is one of the major problems with suburbs.

Triumph of the City is an engrossing book. I was constantly trying to find a time to read some more of this because it is so full of information. Honestly, nothing in Triumph of the City is that shocking. It's all pretty common sense, and the majority of the things he brings up I have thought of before. What makes it interesting is the way everything is presented in one place, with supporting evidence, and the argument works. For the most part anyway, there were a few things I disagree with Glaeser on (but I'm not going to nit pick with him. He's trying to encourage more people to live in cities and that is a-okay in my book). Even though I was intensely enthusiastic about this book, I could see that not everyone would love it. Glaeser is not necessarily entertaining, he lays out the facts for you in a controlled, purposeful manner. Even if you're not interested in the environmental aspects of this book, the first half offers a wonderful history of the American city and profiles the triumphs and downfalls of many cities across the country.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog. I received this book as part of TLC Book Tours.

A tribal source from the nearby city of Mosul told Reuters the radical Sunni Islamists, who dismiss Iraq's pre-Islamic heritage as idolatrous, had pillaged the 3,000-year-old site on the banks of the Tigris River.

The assault against Nimrud came just a week after the release of a video showing Islamic State forces smashing museum statues and carvings in Mosul, the city they seized along with much of northern Iraq last June.

"Daesh terrorist gangs continue to defy the will of the world and the feelings of humanity," Iraq's tourism and antiquities ministry said, referring to Islamic State by its Arabic acronym.

"In a new crime in their series of reckless offences they assaulted the ancient city of Nimrud and bulldozed it with heavy machinery, appropriating the archaeological attractions dating back 13 centuries BC," it said.

Copyright by smart | Design Leif Podhajsky
smart urban stage is a global online project dealing with the term FUTURE OF THE CITY. We ask pioneers from metropolises around the world to question the urban status quo. the results are visions, ideas and solutions for sustainable lifestyles, modern social systems and forward-looking developments in the fields of architecture, design and technology. the worldwide event series is exhibiting ideas and solutions of forward thinking future makers. the brand behind this online project is the car manufacturer smart, which hosted special events throughout Europe during the last two years.

We will need design, technology and ideas to break the syntax of this current model to create cities and environments in which humans well-being and not corporations are placed at the top of the chain. We need to see a rise in renewable energies with mass transit networks built to reflect this, the advent use of bikes and bike lanes, more green areas, communal gardens and parks, more ways to diminish waste and recycle, free widespread access to unregulated internet and localized production are just a few things that hopefully will start to change how we interact and live out our lives in the cities of the future. Leif Podhajsky

VIA The Future of the City

The number of tourists visiting the ancient city of Sardis in İzmir’s Salihli district has increased three fold over the last five years, thanks to promotional work. The ancient city was the capital of Lydia, the civilization that invented money.

Salihli Tourism Association Chairman Mustafa Uçar said that excavations had started in Sardis in 1910 and accelerated again after 1958, unearthing many historical artifacts.

Uçar said the excavations covered an area of 3,000 square meters and shed light on 1,400 years of history between the 7th century B.C and the 7th century A.D., with artifacts from the Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman cultures, among others.

He said among the findings were an acropolis, a gymnasium, a synagogue, a bath, a court building, houses, 85 graves where Lydian kings had been buried and the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven holy temples of Christianity, built in 300 B.C. by the ancient Greeks and renovated by the Romans in the 2nd century A.D.

The ancient city had been overlooked for many years and rarely hosted tourists, said Uçar, adding that interest in the city has been increasing in recent years and it now draws tourists throughout the year.

“Eight to 10 buses of tourists come to Sardis every day,” he said, adding that ongoing excavations and promotional activities were the reason for the increase of interest in the ancient city.

“In recent years, both local management and non-governmental organizations attached great importance to the promotion of Sardis. Symposiums and conferences were held to showcase the importance of the ancient city and the status of the Lydian Kingdom in history. Catalogues and brochures were printed and delivered to travel agencies. The site was promoted in both in Turkey and abroad. As a result, tourist interest in the ancient city has increased every day,” Uçar said.

“The ancient city of Sardis hosted 22,000 people in 2010. This number increased to 27,000 in 2011, 30,000 in 2012, 43,000 in 2013 and 65,000 in 2014. The city is expected to welcome 100,000 tourists annually in the near future,” he said.

Uçar said that the traces of the Lydians, who had led the way for the invention of money, could be found only in Sardis, and expressed the importance of the Temple of Artemis to tourists.

“It is the fourth largest ionic temple in the world. It had remained underground for many years, which is why it is still in good condition. It draws lots of interest from tourists,” Uçar said.

Sources: Hurriyet Daily News [January 09, 2015]

Knidos, believed to be the hometown of Eudoxus, a Greek astronomer, mathematician and student of Plato; Greek physician Euryphon; Greek vase painter Polygnotos and Greek architect and engineer Sostratos, is located at the crossroads of the Aegean and Mediterranean seas.

Research reveals that a physician and his students had established the second largest medical school of its time in Knidos. One of the most important discoveries of its time, the gnomon, first developed by Eudoxus, can still be found in the ancient city.

The head of the Knidos excavations, Selçuk University academic Professor Ertekin Doksanaltı, said the city’s excavations restarted in 2013 after many years of waiting.

He also said the Southern Aegean Development Agency (GEKA) provided 705,000 Turkish Liras of financial support for the Knidos’ restoration and environmental project in 2013, adding that the total budget of the project was 941,000 liras.

He said the team had accelerated its work over the past two years in order to more quickly revive the ancient city, which is very important for the future of Datça district. The excavations of the church (known as “Church D”) and theater will be completed and their structures restored this year, he said.

Doksanaltı said detailed aerial photos of the ancient city were taken from 90 and 120 degree angles.
The ancient city of Knidos was a coastal town, he said, adding that they had searched underwater for the existence of other cultural artifacts around the city.

“Church D, unearthed during the excavations, will be partly restored this season. The building survey, restitution and restoration projects of the structure have already been done,” he said.

Doksanaltı also said the same projects for the small theater would be finished this year. The theater, located on the southern side of the city, was first excavated in the 1970s.

Doksanaltı said Knidos was still magnificent. “Its famous ports that have survived with their round and square towers are still functional. The city, located on two hills that face each other, rises via terraces built on rocky land. The connection between the terraces is provided via stair streets,” he said.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News [April 02, 2015]

In an interview with The Associated Press, UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova described her angry reaction to Thursday's attack that came just a week after video showed Islamic State militants with sledgehammers destroying ancient artifacts at a museum in Mosul.

"We call this cultural cleansing because unfortunately, we see an acceleration of this destruction of heritage as deliberate warfare," Bokova said. She said the attack fit into a larger "appalling vision" of persecution of minorities in the region and declared that attacks on culture are now a security concern.

"It's not a luxury anymore," Bokova said.

Later Friday, the spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general said Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks and said the deliberate destruction "constitutes a war crime and represents an attack on humanity as a whole."

The Iraqi government says Islamic State militants "bulldozed" the renowned archaeological site of the ancient city in northern Iraq with heavy military vehicles on Thursday.

Bokova said U.N. officials have to rely on satellite images of the destroyed city to assess the level of damage, because the dangerous security situation makes it impossible to get people close to the site.

But she said officials have seen images of some of the large statues from the site "put on big trucks and we don't know where they are, possibly for illicit trafficking."

Officials have seen photos of destroyed symbols of the ancient kingdom of Assyria, with the head of a human man and the body of a lion or eagle. She called them and other items at the site priceless.

"The symbolism of this, they are in some of the sacred texts even, in the Bible they are mentioned," she said. "All of this is an appalling and tragic act of human destruction."

She said that before the attack, UNESCO had been preparing to include Nimrud on its list of World Heritage Sites. The city was the second capital of Assyria, a kingdom that began around 900 B.C. and became a great regional power. The discovery of treasures in the city's royal tombs in the 1980s is considered one of the 20th century's most significant archaeological finds.

The site lies just south of Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, which was captured by the Islamic State group in June.

Bokova denounced the "cultural chaos" and said she had alerted both Ban and the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

She was meeting with Ban later Friday and said she was sure of his support.

Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohamed Alhakim, said Iraq had not yet formally asked for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. He did not say what exactly Iraq wanted from the council but warned of the looted treasures.

"Somebody is going to buy these," he said.

Bokova said she also plans to meet with Interpol, major museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, major auction houses and Iraq's neighbors in an attempt to stop the illicit trafficking of items from the Nimrud site.

Bokova appealed in a statement Friday to people around the world, especially young people, to protect "the heritage of the whole of humanity."

"I don't see any justification, any religious belief, any other kind of ambition, political or others, that justify this kind of destruction," she said.

Author: Cara Anna | Source: The Associated Press [March 06, 2015]

Copyright by smart | Design Reza Abedini
smart urban stage is a global online project dealing with the term FUTURE OF THE CITY. We ask pioneers from metropolises around the world to question the urban status quo. the results are visions, ideas and solutions for sustainable lifestyles, modern social systems and forward-looking developments in the fields of architecture, design and technology. the worldwide event series is exhibiting ideas and solutions of forward thinking future makers. the brand behind this online project is the car manufacturer smart, which hosted special events throughout Europe during the last two years.

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An official said the ministry had received reports from its employees in the northern city of Mosul, which is under the control of the radical Islamist group, that the site at Hatra had been demolished on Saturday.

It was difficult to confirm the reports and the ministry had not received any pictures showing the extent of the damage, the official said.

But a resident in the area said he heard a powerful explosion early on Saturday and said other people nearby had reported that IS militants had destroyed some of the larger buildings in Hatra and were bulldozing other parts.

Hatra lies about 110 kilometres south of Mosul, the largest city under the IS group's control.

Director general of the United Nations cultural body UNESCO, Irina Bokova, condemned the reported wanton destruction of the ancient city.

"The destruction of Hatra marks a turning point in the appalling strategy of cultural cleansing underway in Iraq," UNESCO said.

"Official sources today reported the destruction of the World Heritage property of Hatra."

"This is a direct attack against the history of Islamic Arab cities, and it confirms the role of destruction of heritage in the propaganda of extremists groups."

However Mohammed Nuri, an MP from southern Nineveh province, where Hatra is located, cast doubt on whether the reports were accurate, saying "until this moment, there are no confirmed reports that Hatra has been destroyed".

"Hatra is somewhat isolated, and residents are not nearby," he said.

"I have not heard of someone who physically saw the destruction taking place."

A week ago the militants released a video showing them smashing statues and carvings in Mosul's museum, home to priceless Assyrian and Hellenistic artefacts dating back 3,000 years.

On Thursday they attacked the remains of the Assyrian city of Nimrud, south of Mosul, with bulldozers.

UNESCO said the destruction amounted to war crimes.

Hatra dates back 2,000 years to the Seleucid empire which controlled a large part of the ancient world conquered by Alexander the Great.

It is famous for its striking pillared temple at the centre of a sprawling archaeological site.

Source: Reuters [March 07, 2015]

City design

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The report analyzes six of the 12 sites that Syria has nominated as World Heritage Sites: Dura Europos, Ebla, Hama's Waterwheels, Mari, Raqqa, and Ugarit. A forthcoming report will analyze the additional six sites.

"As we continue to study the conditions at Syria's important cultural sites, we have observed significant destruction that is largely the result of conflict. However, unlike our previous analysis of Syria's World Heritage Sites, we're seeing a lot of damage that appears to be the result of widespread looting," said Susan Wolfinbarger, director of the AAAS Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights Project, which authored the report. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania Museum's Penn Cultural Heritage Center and the Smithsonian Institution also contributed to the research.

"This report helps us understand how the extensive the actual damage is to Syria's cultural heritage. It will inform future emergency preservation efforts," said Brian Daniels, director of research and programs at the University of Pennsylvania Museum's Penn Cultural Heritage Center.

In the report, images from 2014 show numerous pits throughout three sites where ancient cities once stood. The pits generally do not appear in similar images from 2011, when the conflict in Syria began. "We interpret these pits as evidence of looting due to the distinct craters visible within the satellite images," said Jonathan Drake, a senior program associate at AAAS.

"This type of documentation really allows us to make a firm statement based on scientific observation of things that have happened at a site," said Wolfinbarger.

"Sometimes when things are reported in the news media or social media, details can be obscured or purposefully misconstrued. But this analysis is replicable. We can say definitively, 'we see this.' And when it is tied it in with other types of information, satellite imagery can give us a more complete picture in parts of the world that are difficult to access."

"These images show the destruction of ancient artifacts, architecture, and most importantly, archaeological context that is the record of humanity's past," said Katharyn Hanson, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Museum's Penn Cultural Heritage Center and a visiting scholar at AAAS. "From the origins of civilization to the first international empires, Syria's cultural heritage and these sites in particular are vitally important to our understanding of history."

The most extensive looting identified in the report was at Dura-Europos, which was founded in the 3rd century B.C. and served as a frontier city as well as the main hub for caravan routes. The site represents a blend of cultural traditions, including Greek, Mesopotamian, Aramaic, Persian, and Roman influences. There have been numerous reports of damage through social media and news reports, and the AAAS report now documents the extent of this activity.

Based on the imagery analysis, 76% of the area within the city wall had been damaged by April 2014, and the looting pits were so close together it was impossible to distinguish individual pits, the researchers report. Looting pits outside the city wall were less dense but still numerous; approximately 3,750 individual pits were observed. Images from 2 April 2014 show four vehicles among the ancient Roman ruins in close proximity to the looting, suggesting that the disturbances at the site may have been ongoing at that time, according to the report.

The second site described in the report is Ebla, the site of an important kingdom in the Early Bronze Age. The site is best known for its archive of several thousand written tablets that "revolutionized knowledge regarding the ancient history and political economy of the region," the report says. Ebla is constructed out of mud brick, so without preservation it is vulnerable to erosion.

The images in the analysis show looting pits, including 45 new holes observed between 18 August 2013 and 4 August 2014, as well as eroded walls, earthen berm fortifications, and heavy vehicle tracks. Military compounds have been constructed on the site, likely due to the fact that the site is elevated over the surrounding plain and provides a good view of the area.

Looting is also widespread at the ancient Mesopotamian city of Mari, which was founded in the early 3rd millennium B.C. and prospered as a node on the trade routes. Like Dura-Europos, Mari is located in the Deir ez-Zor province that has seen violent clashes during the conflict. The Albu Kamal region, where Mari is located, came under the control of ISIS in June 2014.

The looting appears to have ramped up during the last year. The researchers identified 165 visible pits dug between August 2011 and March 2014 (an average of 0.17 pits formed per day). Between 25 March and 11 November 2014, however, they identified 1,286 new pits, an average rate of 5.5 pits dug every day over the seven-month period.

The fourth site is Raqqa, and important city center that exemplifies the transition of a Greek/Byzantine urban center into an Islamic city by 796 A.D. Since 2013 Raqqa has been at the center of the conflict in Syria. After fighting by opposition groups, ISIS took control of the city in October 2013, and in September 2014, the United States and partner nations began an airstrike campaign against ISIS in Raqqa.

The observed damage in vicinity of the Tentative World Heritage site in Raqqa appears to be different from that of the other sites in the analysis, according to the report, with little evidence of direct military conflict. "Rather, when damage is present, it appears to be nearly total and targeted, with specific buildings disappearing while the surrounding buildings remain untouched," the report states.

This phenomenon appears too precise to have been caused by the Syrian Arab Republic Government's military forces, and while it is well known that the United States and other partner air forces have the ability to deliver munitions with high precision, the destroyed sites are all cultural sites located within the UNESCO Tentative World Heritage site boundary, according to the report. "The more plausible explanation is that the demolitions in the vicinity of the Tentative World Heritage site's boundaries are the result of actions by ISIS," the report states.

The two other areas that the researchers analyzed -- the historic waterwheels of Hama, which raised water up to aqueducts for drinking and irrigation, and the ancient site of Ugarit, a mostly stone city that connected the ancient empires of Mesopotamia with those of the Mediterranean -- do not appear to have been damaged.

Copies of the report can be downloaded at http://www.aaas.org/geotech/culturalheritage-SyrianTWHS-122014.html.

Source: American Association for the Advancement of Science [December 17, 2014]

The reopening was brought forward in what officials said was a response to the destruction of priceless artefacts by Islamic State group jihadists in the northern city of Mosul.

"We have been preparing to reopen for the past couple of months, the museum should be open to everyone," Qais Hussein Rashid, the deputy tourism and antiquities minister, told AFP.

"The events in Mosul led us to speed up our work and we wanted to open it today as a response to what the gangs of Daesh did," he said, using an Arabic acronym for the IS group.

On Thursday, the jihadists who have occupied the second city of Mosul since June last year released a video in which militants smash ancient statues with sledgehammers in the city's museum.

Militants are also seen using a jackhammer to deface a colossal 40-tonne Assyrian winged bull in an archaeological park in Mosul.

The destruction sparked global outrage, calls for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and fears over the fate of other major heritage sites in areas under IS control.

The Mosul destruction was the worst disaster to strike Iraq's treasures since the national museum in Baghdad was looted in the chaos that followed the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

The pictures of jihadists gleefully hacking away at treasures dating back several centuries before Christ drew comparisons with the 2001 dynamiting by the Taliban of the Bamiyan buddhas in Afghanistan.

Hunt continues

One jihadist speaking to the camera claims they are destroying them on religious grounds because the statues are symbols of idolatry.

But officials and experts argue the IS militants are seen destroying the pieces that are too bulky to be smuggled and sold to finance their self-proclaimed "caliphate".

The 2003 plundering of the Baghdad museum, footage of which was beamed around the world at the time, has been compared to the 13th century Mongol sack of the city's library.

The museum was considered to host one of the world's greatest archeological collections.

Officials said Saturday that about 15,000 pieces were looted in 2003, of which 4,300 have been recovered.

"We are still tracking down more than 10,000 artefacts in markets and auctions. What we got back were the most important," Rashid said.

After cutting a red ribbon at an official ceremony, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said: "Today the message is clear from Baghdad, from the land of Mesopotamia.

"We will preserve civilisation and we will track down those who want to destroy it," he said.

'Happy day'

The Mosul museum, which UNESCO museology expert Stuart Gibson described as "a small jewel" constructed on the gardens of the former palace of King Faisal of Iraq, was also pillaged in 2003.

Archaeologists have expressed fears the jihadists would go on to destroy more heritage in the areas they control, possibly the Assyrian site of Nimrud and the UNESCO-listed ancient city of Hatra.

Abadi warned traffickers and buyers that Iraq and its partners would not relent in the hunt for looted artefacts.

"We have details on every artefact in Mosul, every piece is marked, and we will track down all the pieces smuggled by Daesh and the terrorist groups. We will track them down and all the world is with us."

Rashid said the reopening would help heal the wounds of the Mosul looting.

"We don't want February 26 to be a day of sadness and gloom... reopening the museum sends a message at home and abroad that it should be restored as a touristic and cultural institution," he said.

The museum is due to reopen to the public on Sunday. Tickets will cost 1,500 dinars (just over a dollar) for Iraqis, 10 US dollars for foreign Arabs and 20 for other foreigners.

"This is a very happy day," said Rashid.

"For the first time there's a whole generation of Iraqis who never knew what the national museum was. Starting tomorrow, kids and families will visit the museum to see the artefacts and touch them."

Author: Karim Abou Merhi | Source: AFP [February 28, 2015]

Hello blogging world! I am officially back in my own house in Iowa City. I'm still not freshened up from my trip, there is laundry and unpacking to do, but I couldn't wait another day to write a blog post. I had every intention of posting more while I was absent, but if I'm being totally honest I loved the break from blogging. I think I really needed it. And now I'm back to bombard with you with pictures from my trip. Jason and I hit up four countries and five cities in seventeen days. It was crazy.

We landed in Amsterdam first, and that was the only place I blogged from. It was also my favorite place we visited. I loved biking around the city and how Amsterdam is a city yet really feels more like a small town.

Favorite Amsterdam moment: Absolutely everything was closed on New Year's Day, so we ended up renting bikes and just riding around all day. It was frustrating at the time because none of our plans worked out, but now that I know we got to do everything we wanted (pretty much) I look back on that day with a great fondness.

From Amsterdam we took a short day trip to Brussels where there is a comic strip museum. Count me excited! Brussels also has a ton of amazing food and was probably the best food we had over the course of our trip.

Favorite Brussels moment: My mouth is still watering over the mulled wine and scalloped potatoes with ham and cheese. What a delicious snack. The comic strip museum was a lot of fun as well, although their gift shop was a huge letdown. Their English selection was one shelf. So yeah, the food wins.

Our next stop was Berlin, which is must say is one of the strangest cities I have ever visited. There is so much street art and punk culture there, which I really loved, but I found that the people were very abrupt. Not rude, just a little harsh. The way Berlin exists today is also about as old as I am, which was weird. You can really see the history of WWII and Communism there, which only makes the city feel harsher.

Favorite Berlin moment: I really loved this particular section of the Berlin Wall, but it's not my favorite moment. I'd have to say the best thing we did in Berlin was visit this bar called Kaufbar. You could buy the vintage furniture in there and they played awesome music. It was a very relaxing environment and felt more like a normal coffeeshop in the United States than a bar.

We took a day trip to Prague from Berlin. All we really had time for was a tour of the city and then some time at bars that evening. This is where we met one thousand Australians because they are all on summer holiday right now. I've met one Australian my whole life and I go to Europe and meet all of them. Crazy.

Favorite Prague moment: We stayed a night in Prague and after having a crazy day where we tried to see everything it was really nice to wake up the next morning and just wander around. Prague is a really beautiful place and the train ride there was even more beautiful.

Our final stop was Munich. We were getting fairly tired at this point but we still did quite a bit. We visited Hofbrauhaus, Dachau, Neuschwanstein, and did some shopping. They love their beer in Munich, so it was a pretty fun place to turn 21 for an American.

Favorite Munich moment: Even though it's not in Munich, the best day we had was my birthday (at least I think it was the best day). I was super hungover but visiting Neuschwanstein was so much fun. Pictures really don't do justice to the beauty of the snow covered forest on the walk up to the castle. It was a fairy tale birthday.

So that's my trip in a tiny nutshell. I had an amazing time and got just the break I needed. Jason and I are already talking about where we want to visit next!

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So much so that battle plans would be drawn up to specifically give the castle at Zhangjiakou, in China's northern Hebei province, a wide berth.

Now archaeologists have begun a daunting project to restore the once-mighty site to something approaching it previous glory, in particular the dilapidated outer wall that repelled every attack which invading Mongolian armies could throw at it.

The restoration of the fortress - which was given the coveted title of 'Wucheng' or 'Martial City' after its construction in 1393 - will see building work completed in the original Ming Dynasty style of architecture, Cinese sources report.

The project will see the restoration of the Ming and Qing era commercial districts, the Great Wall Martial Museum, the Golden Harvest Academy and performance theatres as well as the opening of the Red Tourist Route, with all work planned to be complete in 2016. The restoration work will also include the ongoing protection of surviving structures.

The castle in Wanquan county - known in China as a 'living fossil of the Ming military system' - was built in 1393 but is relatively well-preserved, especially the interior city area which includes the residences of generals and wealthy merchants.

The fortress has huge historical, cultural and military significance and has key cultural relic status in China.

Author: Edward Chow | Source: Daily Mail Online [April 07, 2015]

The site dates back to the time of the Achaemenid king Darius the Great in the 5th century BCE. It involves two main diversion canals on the Karun River, one of which, Gargar canal, is still in use providing water to the city of Shushtar via a series of tunnels that supply water to mills.

The system forms a cliff from which water cascades into a downstream basin and enters south of the city enabling people in Shushtar to plant orchards and create farms over an area of 40,000 hectares.

Source: Iran Front Page [December 25, 2014]

Residents say the extremists smashed the locks that had protected the biggest repository of learning in the northern Iraq town, and loaded around 2,000 books — including children’s stories, poetry, philosophy and tomes on sports, health, culture and science — into six pickup trucks. They left only Islamic texts.

The rest?

“These books promote infidelity and call for disobeying Allah. So they will be burned,” a bearded militant in traditional Afghani two-piece clothing told residents, according to one man living nearby who spoke to The Associated Press. The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation, said the Islamic State group official made his impromptu address as others stuffed books into empty flour bags.

Since the Islamic State group seized a third of Iraq and neighbouring Syria, they have sought to purge society of everything that doesn’t conform to their violent interpretation of Islam. They already have destroyed many archaeological relics, deeming them pagan, and even Islamic sites considered idolatrous. Increasingly books are in the firing line.

Mosul, the biggest city in the Islamic State group’s self-declared caliphate, boasts a relatively educated, diverse population that seeks to preserve its heritage sites and libraries. In the chaos that followed the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein, residents near the Central Library hid some of its centuries-old manuscripts in their own homes to prevent their theft or destruction by looters.

But this time, the Islamic State group has made the penalty for such actions death. Presumed destroyed are the Central Library’s collection of Iraqi newspapers dating to the early 20th century, maps and books from the Ottoman Empire and book collections contributed by around 100 of Mosul’s establishment families.

Days after the Central Library’s ransacking, militants broke into University of Mosul’s library. They made a bonfire out of hundreds of books on science and culture, destroying them in front of students.

A University of Mosul history professor, who spoke on condition he not be named because of his fear of the Islamic State group, said the extremists started wrecking the collections of other public libraries last month. He reported particularly heavy damage to the archives of a Sunni Muslim library, the library of the 265-year-old Latin Church and Monastery of the Dominican Fathers and the Mosul Museum Library with works dating back to 5000 BC.

Citing reports by the locals who live near these libraries, the professor added that the militants used to come during the night and carry the materials in refrigerated trucks with Syria-registered license plates. The fate of these old materials is still unknown, though the professor suggested some could be sold on the black market. In September, Iraqi and Syrian officials told the AP that the militants profited from the sale of ancient artifacts.

The professor said Islamic State group militants appeared determined to “change the face of this city … by erasing its iconic buildings and history.”

Since routing government forces and seizing Mosul last summer, the Islamic State group has destroyed dozens of historic sites, including the centuries-old Islamic mosque shrines of the prophets Seth, Jirjis and Jonah.

An Iraqi lawmaker, Hakim al-Zamili, said the Islamic State group “considers culture, civilization and science as their fierce enemies.”

Al-Zamili, who leads the parliament’s Security and Defence Committee, compared the Islamic State group to raiding medieval Mongols, who in 1258 ransacked Baghdad. Libraries’ ancient collections of works on history, medicine and astronomy were dumped into the Tigris River, purportedly turning the waters black from running ink.

“The only difference is that the Mongols threw the books in the Tigris River, while now Daesh is burning them,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. “Different method, but same mentality.”

Authors: Sinan Salaheddin & Sameer N. Yacoub | Source: Associated Press [January 31, 2015]