Bagan Archaeological Area and Monuments Tentative List Site was the capital city of the first
Myanmar Kingdom. It is a complex site in terms of its dimension of more than 13 by 8 km and
also in terms of its large number of monuments exceeding 3000, many of which are still highly
venerated by the local population, as well as, national and international pilgrims and tourists
visiting the site. The proper management of such a heritage site entails a comprehensive set of
protection, conservation and administration operations. All these operations require the
allocation of human and economic resources that are currently still scarce in the country.
Following the successful World Heritage listing of the Pyu Ancient Cities in June 2014, the
Myanmar government has singled out Bagan Archaeological Area and Monuments Tentative List
site as its next priority for World Heritage nomination. Myanmar therefore requested support
from UNESCO to provide technical assistance.

With a view to safeguarding Bagan within the World Heritage framework, it is important to
improve the state of conservation of the monuments and to maintain the sites’ authenticity and
integrity in order to ensure that it is preserved for present and future generations. Bagan is
vulnerable to a range of factors including disaster risk, weathering effects, and inappropriate
conservation materials and techniques. In the face of a boom in visitor arrivals and accelerated
development pressure it is not only important to improve the overall management of the site,
but also to enhance the conservation practice and measures in Bagan in order to make the
monuments resilient to the various factors that are affecting them.

In response to these needs, the project “Technical Assistance for the Conservation of Built
Heritage in Bagan” was developed to improve the conservation of monuments in Bagan by
demonstrating international conservation standards, as well as by improving national capacity
in applied conservation techniques.

The project therefore focused on fundamental steps in the conservation process such as
documentation of built heritage, rapid condition assessment and monitoring, as well as in‐depth
condition assessment. In the course of the project a series of trainings and hands‐on working
sessions were carried out that involved the technical staff of the Department of Archaeology
and National Museum (DoA), as well as, national expert organizations such as the Association of
Myanmar Architects (AMA) and the Myanmar Engineering Society (MES). The DoA staff and
national experts worked alongside international experts and conducted result‐oriented
fieldwork in Bagan from which standard‐setting documents for the future conservation of the
site were produced.

The General Methodology for In‐depth Condition Assessment of Bagan monuments is the result
of a pilot assessment that was undertaken in several working sessions throughout 2015 at a
selected monument in Bagan (No. 1249 Phya‐sa‐shwe‐gu). The methodology was developed
under the lead of Professor Masahiko Tomoda from the National Research Institute of Cultural
Property Japan (NRICPT) who worked together with the DoA in Bagan, staff from the Association
of Myanmar Architects and an international expert team consisting of Mara Landoni
(conservation architect, University of Milan), Pierre Pichard (conservation architect, EFEO),
Salvatore Russo (structural engineer, IUAV) and Saw Htwe Zaw (structural engineer, MES).
The specific objective of developing a methodology for In‐depth Condition Assessment was to
establish new standards for maintaining or recovering sound preservation condition of the
Bagan monuments. However, conservation problems related to exterior as well as interior
finishing of the monument, such as stucco or mural paintings, are out of scope of this project
because another currently on‐going project is dealing with these issues. This project is therefore
focalizing mostly onto structural problems of the standing monuments.