About Us

By 2012, the Directorate-General of Antiquities & Museums (DGAM) was unable to intervene in many archaeological sites, especially in Idleb, southern and western parts of Aleppo, and the northern part of Hama. Many DGAM employees in those areas were no longer under the remit of the Syrian government and this urgent need to act during the conflict was the main reason for creating the Syrian Center for Cultural Heritage Protection. A group of volunteers comprising former employees of the DGAM founded the center as an alternative institution. The actions taken by the Syrian Center for Cultural Heritage during the conflict include documenting smuggled antiquities, documentation of damaged and destroyed sites, awareness-raising actions in the local communities and first aid and emergency measures at different sites.

The Centre’s biggest project is the documentation and protection of the museum of Ma‘arat al-Nu‘man, which has been under constant threat since 2011. In June 2015, after getting struck by two barrel-bombs, the Center undertook first aid measures for the building within the museum complex, removing and safely storing archaeological materials, documenting the damage to the museum building and the artifacts, and preparing a catalog of damaged artifacts.

For six years, the Centre has monitored and documented damage at the Dead Cities, Ebla, the Mosque of Prophet Yusuf, Tell Hazarnin – Tell Ma’ara Herma – Tell Teramla, Tell Al Qadim, Tell Al Qulayah, Tell Safwan, Tell Talpas, Tell al Nar, Tell Hayish – Tell Jafar, Tel Tal, Tell Al-Harjan, and archaeological sites in Jabal Barish. In addition, the members of the Center carried out several awareness-raising campaigns addressing local communities. .

The Center works independently, without any political affiliation to any group, and has been cooperating with several international heritage organizations. Heritage for Peace has supported them through training programs in Damage Assessment (Heritage For Peace, 2014), and the on-going development of the SHELTr training program in 2018 (Gerda Henkel Stiftung 2016). The Center also received support from the SHOSI Initiative (Safeguarding the Heritage of Syria and Iraq), which is a consortium of several institutions and local Syrians, activists, archaeologists, and museum staff – (including some members of the Antiquities Center in Free Idlib). It organized an emergency workshop providing the participants with basic supplies for packing and securing museum collections. In May, the museum was hit in an airstrike, but the protection measures they implemented protected them. The project’s in-country team conducted a systematic looting documentation and applied emergency protection to most endangered structures. .