Skopje Revamp Devours Macedonian Heritage Funds

[poiuytrewq0987]

It's hardly surprising to see the less important Serbian and Bulgarian buildings left to decay. In comparison, pseudo-neo-Hellenic buildings are being erect all over the country.

This year Macedonia’s government allocated only 774,000 euros for preservation of the country’s cultural heritage, much of which is now in need of urgent intervention.

Critics note that this amount is equal to the sum paid for only one of the monuments that forms part of the vast government-financed revamp of the capital, the project called “Skopje 2014”.

At the same time, around 70 per cent of historic monuments in Macedonia are in critical condition, according to the government’s own National Conservation Centre.

Staff at the Centre fear the true percentage may be even bigger. They admit they don’t have a complete picture, as their funds are insufficient even for carrying out regular field visits.

Observers warn that the situation is deteriorating fast because of the lack of a state strategy for heritage.

The project’s piece-de-resistance is a 22-metre-high statue of Alexander the Great, which will rise out of an ornate fountain in the main square. The cost of this statue alone, according to some estimates, is about 8 million euros. On average, each smaller monument is costed at around 500,000 euros.

Despite the government’s initial insistence that the overall cost of the revamp of the capital would not exceed 90 million euros, the opposition note what appears to be a regular practice of adding annexes to already signed building agreements. These considerably increase the cost of each item.

The opposition says it fears that the total cost of the project in the capital could reach a total of 500 million euros, equivalent to about 20 per cent of Macedonia’s annual budget of 2.4 billion euros.

This attitude of official negligence so shocked a visiting Chicago art history professor and museum curator, Rolf Achilles, that after writing to the US embassy about it, the embassy granted $650,000 to save the church.

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/arti...heritage-funds

[poiuytrewq0987]

Just to get an idea of how tall a 22-meters statue is:




27-meters tall White Tower of Thessaloniki:



They're going to have a statue of AtG 22-meters tall which is pretty tall... *inserts massive facepalm*.