An Evaluation of Re-functioning Opportunities of Historical Churches in Walled-City Famagusta

Abstract

The historical buildings are the witnesses of our cultural past and they show the characteristics and philosophy of our lives. These buildings have high conservation values that must be conserved and cared about. The historical churches are very sensitive monuments that must be conveyed to the future because of their symbolic value. Walled-City Famagusta encloses a variety of churches from huge Cathedrals to small chapels. This thesis is an evaluation of the re-functioning opportunities for the historical churches of Walled-City Famagusta. Most of these churches are without function because they are in a secular country which has a majority of Muslim residents and they do not use these churches for worship. Some of these churches are re- functioned already. In the first chapter, the aim, methodology, problem definition, and limitation of study are given in details. Chapter 2 gives general information about conservation of historical monuments and adaptive re-use of historical churches with successful examples from the world. Chapter 3 provides a determination of historical analysis and interior architectural space analysis criteria of these churches. The historical analysis provides in detail the conservation values of these historical churches and the architectural space analysis will also be given in detail. Chapter 4 determines the historical and architectural analysis of churches which are preserved. The inventories are filled by data both found from sources and site analyses. This chapter also contains the community survey which was done with people from two different backgrounds, the residents and tourists, and it includes the evaluation of these analyses. In the conclusion the appropriate function recommendations for these churches are determined according to interior architectural space analysis, historical space analysis and survey results.