Study of architectural heritage at İstanbul`s Historical Peninsula in Byzantium Period in the context of conservation and cultural tourism

ABSTRACTConservation of the cultural and natural heritage is an issue that all communities of the worldattach importance. There are national and international, official and voluntary organizations,established to work on this issue. The main subject of these organizations is, to protect andsustain cultural elements without losing any of their values. Regarding cultural heritage,recognition and introduction of the life styles and cultures of all civilizations in history, has avital importance in the protection and sustainability of those cultures and life styles. Thisstudy is about investigating the help and the value of recognition and presentation of thearchitectural monuments, which are an important part of the Byzantine culture and civilizationexisted in Istanbul for centuries, to their protection and sustainability. Furthermore, regardingthe context of conservation, the monuments proposed to be protected are also studied from theperspective of cultural tourism, a concept that has an increasing potential and futureexpectation in the conservation areas of the world.Reliable inventory systems are needed to produce information sources that could be the basisof conservation studies. Complete, actual, easily reachable information sources would play animportant role in the making of proper conservation decisions. Gathered information couldalso be used in different areas such as documentation, presentation and tourism. This studyaims to determine the need to specific inventory systems for different information structures,such as location-specific inventories, function-specific inventories, civilization-specificinventories… or combination of these.Keywords: Cultural and natural heritage, conservation and cultural tourism, specificinventory systems, architectural heritage of Byzantine, tourist information methods.ix