State Hermitage Museum to train Syrian experts in restoring antiquities

St PETERSBURG, November 30. /TASS/. The State Hermitage Museum will share its technology of restoring the monuments of past epochs with restoration specialists from Syria so that they could apply the Hermitage Museum experience to the restoration of antiquities crippled by militant groupings, Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky, the Director General of the museum said on Wednesday. "Restoration of museums [in Syria] has gotten into the agenda," he told a news conference. "We’re pondering Days of the Hermitage Museum in Damascus, in the course of which we’ll select the people who will then come to St Petersburg and will get training here in how to restore the things they need there now." "Re-creation of a museum is a very important activity because life beings around the museum," Dr. Piotrovsky said. "We continue doing this." He said the Syrian representatives were handed a 3D model of Palmyra during the recent International Cultural Forum in St Petersburg. Experts from the Hermitage Museum and the Institute of Material Culture History, which reports to the Russian Academy of Science, drafted the 3D model after an expedition to Syria. "This is a crucial document that offers the basis for further works and discussions," Dr. Piotrovsky said. "No one has ever had a program like this, a program that makes it possible to take a look at literally every stone. That’s a big achievement." The 3D model of Palmyra, an ancient city where terrorists of the Islamic State grouping destroyed a number of unparalleled monuments after a second seizure of the place in 2015, was designed on the basis of photos made by archeologists from the Institute of Material Culture History and the Hermitage Museum. After liberation of the Palmyra area by Syrian government troops, a team of St Petersburg archeologists led by the Hermitage Museum Deputy Director, Natalya Solovyova, made an expedition to Palmyra in September 2016 to register the scale of destruction there, to take photos and to create a 3D model of the entire architectural and landscape compound. Russian experts spent about a year developing the model. Today contains the most exhaustive information on the actual condition of the monument. Syrian Ambassador to Russia, Riad Haddad, told a ceremony of transfer of the 3D model during the St Petersburg Cultural Forum the Syrian government praised Russia’s interest in protection of cultural heritage in his country and the efforts of Russian specialists to create the 3D model of Palmyra. He particularly underlined the role the State Hermitage Museum and the Russian Ministry of Culture played in this sphere. Read more