The Alliance to Restore Cultural Heritage in Jerusalem
Above Image: Vue Générale de la Mosquée d’Omar, Robertson, Beato & Co., 1857. Photo: National Science and Society Picture Library
About ARCH
ARCH – The Alliance to Restore Cultural Heritage in Jerusalem was founded in 2010 in Geneva, Switzerland, by a small group of academics. Our logo symbolizes the arches we extend towards alliance with individuals and organizations that share our aim to help protect vulnerable heritage in Jerusalem. We are an international team comprising experts in archaeology, interreligious relations and dialogue, international and human rights law, the histories of apartheid, and the digital humanities. Additionally, our team’s capabilities include reporting on the illicit trafficking of cultural goods and training on digital tools for cultural heritage documentation and preservation. In 2012, ARCH was accredited as an NGO by the Chancellerie d’État, République et Canton de Genève.
In Jerusalem, the rows of graves are the lines of the city’s history while the book is the soil. Everyone has passed through For Jerusalem welcomes all visitors, whether disbelievers or believers.
Walk through, and read the headstones in all languages You will find the Africans, the Europeans, the Kipchaks, the Slavs, the Bosniaks, the Tatars, the Turks, the believers, the disbelievers, the poor and the rich, the hermits, and the miscreants. Here lie all sorts of people that ever walked the earth. They were the footnotes of the book, now they are the main text before us.
These are some of the long-term projects in which we have been engaged.
The Virtual Illés Initiative
The Virtual Illés Initiative is a pioneering, transdisciplinary digital humanities project that aims to compile these fascinating records and facilitate universal access to these uncovered facets of the city.
Recognizing our comparative advantage as internationally engaged professionals in diverse fields, we propose to assemble a group of international cultural heritage experts and scholars.
The Mughrabi Quarter of Jerusalem was wiped off the face of the map by the State of Israel in 1967, but it remains intact – albeit in miniature – as part of the Illés Relief of Jerusalem (1873).
With the aim of protecting and preserving the cemetery as a place of living memory and of eternal sanctity, we welcome poetry that celebrates Mamilla as a resting place for generations of Palestinian families.
