Over the decades of his long reign (1736-'96), Hongli, the Qianlong Emperor of China, found the time, when not expanding his empire's territory or knitting together its divergent ethnic groups, to decorate his Tranquility and Longevity Palace in the northeast corner of the Forbidden City.
After the Qianlong Emperor died in 1799, his trove was neglected for many years, until the Palace Museum (as the Forbidden City is now called) and the World Monuments Fund began restoring it.
(CNN) -- When the last emperor of China fled Beijing's Forbidden City in 1924, the doors closed on one of its greatest treasures: the Qianlong Garden.
A secluded compound of pavilions and gardens built in the 1770s for the retirement of the Qianlong Emperor, it housed some of the most extravagant interiors found anywhere in the imperial palace complex.
As other areas were opened up to tourists, the garden remained mothballed for almost 100 years, its exquisite design and decorative treasures staying relatively unaltered since the 18th century.
The centre was built with a US$200,000 grant from the World Monuments Fund (WMF), American Express, and Chile’s National Forestry Commission (CONAF).
A press release from WMF explained the reason for the renovations:
“Severely impacted by increasing numbers of tourists each year, Orongo has been the focus of an intensive conservation and interpretive program supported by WMF and American Express since 2001.
La Giordania è un Paese con un ricchissimo patrimonio archeologico. Molti siti, come Petra e Jerash (Gerasa), sono universalmente noti, ma ve ne sono decine che potrebbero attrarre visitatori se ben presentati e gestiti. Ve ne sono poi migliaia che hanno un valore scientifico e di ricerca non ben valutato per la mancanza di informazioni precise sul loro stato di conservazione.
Of the approximately 300,000 buildings in Haiti that were damaged during the January 2010 earthquake, the country’s historic gingerbread houses endured the disaster relatively well. In fact, researchers estimate than only 5 percent of these beloved buildings partially or fully collapsed.
There are those who still think the bravura brutalist design of St Peter's Seminary in Cardross, 25 miles from Glasgow, to be an eyesore. There are those who say it was blighted by technical problems from the day it opened 45 years ago. Then there are those who believe that this is one of the greatest modern buildings in Europe. Whatever your opinion, St Peter's was deemed important enough to be placed on the World Monument Fund list of the "World's 100 Most Endangered Sites" in 2008.
The recovered splendor of the abbey, made possible by matching donations from the World Monuments Fund and a local charitable foundation, “helps to cancel the images of tumbled stones and wounded landscape that we thought would be difficult to heal,” said the Abruzzo-born Gianni Letta, the under secretary to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who has been very involved in monitoring the reconstruction from the earthquake. Now, two years later, he said at the inauguration, “This abbey is more beautiful than when I was a boy.”
Despite falling into a state of neglect and disrepair over the past century, Port-au-Prince's beautiful, ornate 'gingerbread' houses were unlikely survivors of last year's earthquake. As the Haitian capital recovers, these once-grand houses are setting a foundation for its cultural and economic restoration.
High up in the historic Ansonia -- favored home of singers, artists, eccentrics -- on Manhattan’s west side, Marilyn Perry is wondering which of her many paintings she likes the most.
“Maybe that one?” She ponders, pointing to a vibrant green work bursting with life. “But I’d sell it anyway.”
For decades Perry, 71, made her mark as the president of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and chairman of the World Monuments Fund, which she built into architecture’s version of the World Wildlife Fund.
NEW YORK, NY.- Two years after a devastating earthquake hit the Abruzzo region of Italy, an important historic structure damaged in the tremor has been returned to its community fully restored.
