The Influence Of Cultural Heritage

Cultural heritage is increasingly targeted, especially in conflict or post-conflict areas. As visible platforms of cultural diversity, cities and their cultural institutions or historic monuments are under threat of looting or intentional destruction. As core markers of people’s identity, cultural traditions and expressions are primary targets for oppression and their interdiction constitutes a form of psychological warfare. Those attacks on cultural symbols are intended to weaken the foundations of social cohesion and threaten peoples’ integrity and cultural diversity.

1.0 CULTURE

Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

As a constituent part of the affirmation and enrichment of cultural identities, as a legacy belonging to all humankind, the cultural heritage gives each particular place its recognizable features and is the storehouse of human experience. The preservation and the presentation of the cultural heritage are therefore a corner-stone of any cultural policy. (UNESCO, 1989). Cultural heritage does not end at landmarks and artifacts collection. It likewise incorporates customs, traditions or living expressions acquired from our predecessors and passed on to us and our relatives, for example, oral customs, traditions performing arts and expressions, social practices, ceremonies, learning and works on concerning nature and the universe or the learning and aptitudes to deliver customary

Its strategic location, centuries of changing control over the town, and associated campaigns of building have resulted in a complex yet clear expression of dramatically different cultures—Lusignan, Genoese, Venetian, Ottoman, British, and modern Cypriot—layered in succession. Each layer represents Famagusta’s role in the geopolitical conflicts that have been the mainspring of the history of the Eastern Mediterranean, and a pivot of world history, since the Crusades. Episodes of war, siege, and conflict punctuate the history of Famagusta for the last 1,000 years. As an urban settlement, Famagusta was first shaped by its important role in the Crusades, serving as the center for Lusignan kingdoms amassing significant power and wealth from this Mediterranean base. This French dynasty built a remarkable series of Gothic churches, elaborate in detail and rich in decoration. The mercantile statism of the medieval period—especially the ascendance of Venice—gave the Walled City its abiding shape, defined by the impressive system of fortifications (walls, bastions, gates, moat and glacis).

7.2 AESTHETIC