Historical landscape characterisation: Case study of Amasra

Historical landscape character assessment is considered as an effective approach in the management of cultural heritage sites and conservation planning. The historical landscape character assessment, which is also the most important tool for understanding and interpreting historical landscapes, differs from the Landscape Character Analysis technique, which has entered our country's agenda with the European Landscape Convention, in terms of detailing the historical and archaeological aspects. Due to this feature, it is considered as an effective method in managing heritage sites and historic environment in our country that hosts different cultures. Starting from this necessity, this method was applied in the city of Amasra that is under the pressure of tourism and housing and that faces the risk of losing its historical texture completely. In the study, the time depth, historical landscape characters and historical landscape character components of the city of Amasra were revealed using literature review, oral history/subjective mapping and photo analysis techniques. Two different spatial maps from the years of 1920-1960 and 2016-2018 were created and the spatial changes of these periods were shown. 143 photos shared by the visitors on the internet were traced according to their GPS locations with the help of QGIS program thus, the traces of the visitors were determined and those traces were compared with the visible tangible cultural heritage sites in order to reveal the current perception.