At a seminar on preserving the cultural heritages held at TTPU this week, Laureate of the State Prize of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Abdusafi Rahmonov, said that Turin Polytechnic University makes differences and takes the responsibility while none of the universities of construction and architecture across Uzbekistan raised this issue. As a senior specialist at the Restoration and Research Department of Cultural Heritages in Tashkent, Mr. Rahmonov said that we need to rush to save the last brick and that traffic fumes are destroying historical monuments.

Thanks to ERAMCA Erasmus + project, local honorary speakers, professors and researchers met their counterparts from Italy, Germany, Croatia and Tajikistan in a virtual conference to shed light on problems that deteriorate conditions of cultural heritage sites in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. 

In his opening speech, Dr. Jamshid Inoyatkhodjayev, Rector of TTPU,  said,  “Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are meeting our Western partners online and have local partners here in the university’s  conference hall, but I can assure you it won’t affect the quality of the seminar at all.”

Dr. Inoyatkhodjayev was absolutely right as the quality of the seminar was really sustained from start to end as participants hotly debated over issues like restoring a school of restorers and the apathy of certain bodies of organizations to rushing to save the last brick of certain historical monuments.

A leading scholar and professor of Politecnico di Torino, Fulvio Rinaudo, said that frankness among participants will truly shed light on problems. Moreover, Alisher Yarkulov, a specialist at the Department for Preservation and Utilization of Cultural Objects of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Uzbekistan said that by optimizing our abilities and utilizing the experience and technologies of advanced Western economies in regard to the restoration of cultural objects, we will succeed in our mutual effort.

“History is not only historical monuments but also people, cultures, streets and dwellings. We should let those dwellings evolve along with historical monuments in their surroundings. We cannot just sweep away these historical dwellings and build modern buildings around historical monuments.” 

— Askar Khasanov, Professor of the Department Geotechnical engineering department, SamSACII