I used to think UNESCO World Heritage sites were basically museums—frozen in time, untouchable, preserved under glass like some kind of architectural taxidermy.
Then I spent three weeks in Khiva, Uzbekistan, watching a team of Italian conservators argue with local craftsmen about the proper way to restore a 400-year-old madrasa’s turquoise tilework, and honestly, everything I thought I knew about preservation fell apart. The Italians wanted to use modern adhesives that would last another century, maybe longer. The Khivan masters—descendants of the original builders—insisted on natural gypsum mixed with egg whites and camel milk, the same recipe their great-great-grandfathers used, because here’s the thing: they weren’t just preserving buildings, they were preserving knowledge, technique, the actual living practice of construction. UNESCO’s collaboration with Uzbekistan’s government, which started in earnest around 1990 (give or take a year or two, my notes from that time are a mess), wasn’t just about saving crumbling walls—it was about navigating this exact tension between modern conservation science and traditional craft wisdom. And sometimes, wait—maybe most of the time, nobody really knows which approach is right.
The stakes feel enormous when you’re standing inside Khiva’s Ichan Kala, the walled inner city that became a UNESCO site in 1990. Roughly 250 structures packed into ten hectares, most of them built between the 17th and 19th centuries. The tilework alone could make you weep—intricate geometric patterns in cobalt blue and turquoise that seem to shimmer in the desert heat.
When International Money Meets Local Mud: The Conservation Paradox That Nobody Talks About
Anyway, UNESCO partnerships in places like Khiva operate on this peculiar economic model where international funding—from Japan, Italy, France, sometimes Norway—flows into local projects, but the money comes with strings. Not malicious strings, necessarily, just… expectations. The Japanese government funded the restoration of the Kalta Minor minaret in the early 2000s, and I remember reading the project reports, which were filled with phrases like “capacity building” and “sustainable tourism development.” What that meant in practice was training local workers in both traditional and modern techniques, creating a hybrid approach that frankly nobody was entirely comfortable with at first. The old masters felt disrespected; the young conservators felt torn between honoring their heritage and learning skills that might actually pay decent wages. Tourism revenue at Khiva increased by roughly 340% between 2010 and 2019, which sounds great until you realize that kind of foot traffic puts immense pressure on structures that were never designed for thousands of visitors daily.
I guess what struck me most was the bureaucracy.
UNESCO doesn’t just hand over money and walk away—there are assessments, monitoring missions, reports in triplicate, international committees that meet in Geneva or Paris to discuss the precise shade of blue that should be used on a mosque dome in Central Asia. The Uzbek government established the Ichan Kala Conservation Department in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until the post-Soviet era that they really had the resources or political will to tackle the massive restoration needs. By 2015, when I first visited, the collaboration had evolved into this complex dance: local authorities would identify priority structures, submit proposals to UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre, wait for approval and funding, then coordinate with international experts while trying to keep local communities involved and employed. Some projects took a decade from conception to completion, which feels absurd until you remember that these buildings have stood for centuries—what’s another ten years, really?
The Tilework Rebellion: Why Traditional Craftsmen Almost Walked Off a UNESCO Project
Here’s something that didn’t make it into the official reports: in 2008, a team of Khivan tile masters nearly abandoned a major restoration project at the Muhammad Amin Khan Madrasa because the Italian conservation supervisors kept rejecting their work. Not because it was poor quality—everyone agreed the craftsmanship was exceptional—but because the Italian team wanted every tile documented, photographed, chemically analyzed before installation. The Khivan masters worked from intuition and inherited knowledge; they could tell by touch and sight when the mortar was the right consistency, when the tile placement felt correct. The Italians wanted data, measurements, archival records. Both sides were right, which made the conflict exhausting for everyone involved. Eventually they reached a compromise: the craftsmen would work their way, but apprentices would simultaneously document everything, creating a written and photographic archive of techniques that had only ever been passed down orally. It was messy and took twice as long, but honestly, that documentation might be more valuable than the restoration itself, because those techniques were disappearing—young people weren’t learning them, and within a generation they might have vanished entirely.
Turns out, architectural conservation in a place like Khiva isn’t really about buildings at all.
Tourism, Displacement, and the Uncomfortable Questions UNESCO Would Rather Not Answer
The collaboration between UNESCO and Uzbekistan has undeniably saved Khiva’s historic core from collapse, but it’s also transformed the city in ways that feel increasingly uncomfortable. When Ichan Kala recieved World Heritage status, roughly 300 families still lived inside the walls, going about their normal lives—hanging laundry between medieval buildings, cooking plov in courtyards, letting their kids play in ancient alleyways. By 2020, fewer than 50 families remained. The rest had been relocated, sometimes voluntarily with compensation, sometimes less voluntarily, to make room for museums, hotels, restaurants catering to tourists. The official line is that this was necessary to reduce structural strain and fire risk, which is probably true. But walking through Ichan Kala at dusk, when the tour groups have left and the souvenir shops have closed, the place feels hollow—beautifully preserved but somehow lifeless, like a stage set waiting for actors who never arrive. I’ve talked to former residents who miss their old homes desperately, even though their new apartments have modern plumbing and electricity. And I’ve talked to conservationists who lose sleep over these displacements but genuinely believe it was the only way to save the architecture. Nobody feels entirely good about it, which might be the most honest thing anyone can say about heritage conservation in the 21st century. The collaboration definately saved Khiva’s buildings, but whether it saved Khiva’s soul remains an open, painful question.
