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History lovers are facing tough times as ISIS wreaks havoc on the ancient treasures of the Middle East, while wars and looting strip away what's left. Yet, amid the devastation, there is solace to be found in the extraordinary feats of restorers and conservators. These five restorations prove that even when it seems like all hope is lost, broken pieces, much like Humpty Dumpty, can still be mended.
1. THE 1770 RATZER MAP OF NEW YORK
In May 2010, the Brooklyn Historical Society uncovered that they were the proud owners of one of New York's rarest maps: the 1770 edition of Plan of the City of New York by British Army officer and surveyor Lieutenant Bernard Ratzer [PDF]. Before this find, only three of these maps were believed to have survived. Mounted on linen and heavily shellacked, the map was in such fragile condition that pieces of it crumbled as map cataloger Carolyn Hansen attempted to unroll it.
Paper conservator Jonathan P. Derow revived the fragile fragments by placing the map in a tent and running a humidifier inside. Once the map became flexible, he carefully removed the linen backing, soaked the map in an alkaline bath for four days, and then meticulously repositioned the fragments to ensure they shrank into place once dried. As a final touch, Derow procured several early 19th-century books printed on cloth paper (not wood pulp), sacrificed them to a noble cause, baked them in the oven, and boiled them to create a cloth paper slurry that perfectly matched the map's color when painted onto the white lines.
The end result was so extraordinary, it’s almost unbelievable that it’s the same map.
2. THE GREAT SOUTH GATE OF SEOUL // SOUTH KOREA
The Great South Gate of Seoul, also known as the Gate of Exalted Ceremonies, is a wooden pagoda-style structure embedded in the city’s fortress wall, built in 1398—just four years after the city became the capital of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910)—and rebuilt in 1447. To repair damage sustained during the Japanese occupation (1910-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953 ceasefire), the gate underwent major restoration in 1961. It wasn’t until 2006 that it was finally reopened to the public, a full century after it was closed and the ancient fortress wall surrounding the city was destroyed.
Two years later, a 69-year-old with a grudge over a failed property deal climbed a ladder to the second floor of the gate, poured paint thinner on the floor, and set it ablaze with a disposable lighter. Firefighters battled for five hours to bring the fire under control. By the time they succeeded, the pagoda—the city’s oldest wooden structure—was nothing but a charred ruin.
Fortunately, someone foresaw the importance of meticulously documenting the gate during the 2005 renovation, leaving restorers with 182 pages of detailed blueprints as a foundation. They also had the charred remnants, which surprisingly contained a wealth of materials that could be salvaged. Bent nails were heated and straightened, over 60,000 original wood fragments were found to be reusable, and the 68 stone animals that once adorned the roof were painstakingly reassembled like pieces of a giant puzzle.
With no other option but to start from scratch, conservators decided to return the gate to its original state, including the walls destroyed during the Japanese occupation. This time, only traditional construction methods were used, unlike the 1961 restoration that incorporated modern materials. Every roof tile was handmade in traditional kilns, and the dancheong—the vivid, traditional decorative painting—was applied using natural paints. Not a single power tool was involved. Carpenters and masons had to either find their grandfathers' tools or recreate traditional ones.
Five years after the fire, the Great South Gate was restored to its former glory.
3. BAPHUON TEMPLE // ANGKOR THOM, CAMBODIA
Speaking of puzzles: Cambodia's Baphuon Temple certainly takes the crown. Built around 1060 by King Udayadityavarman II, it was once the largest temple in the country until Angkor Wat surpassed it a century later. Structural issues plagued it from the very start, and later redesigns only worsened the problems. By the early 20th century, the temple had collapsed into ruins. In 1960, the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient (EFEO), a French conservation group, took on the daunting task of restoring the temple. Their ambitious plan involved dismantling all 300,000 sandstone blocks, reinforcing the crumbling sandy structure, and solving a monumental 300,000-piece 3D puzzle.
Since Baphuon Temple was built using dry stone construction, each block had to be meticulously carved to fit with its neighbor—and as the head architect said, “not a square centimeter of stone was left without decoration.” To make this plan work, every block needed to be labeled and thoroughly cataloged. The scattered stones covered an area of 10 hectares (around 25 acres) surrounding the temple. The dismantling process spanned years, and when civil war erupted in 1970, the restoration efforts were hindered. The Khmer Rouge ousted the French EFEO restorers and executed most of the Cambodian workers. When Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, the EFEO headquarters was ransacked—and along with it, the invaluable documentation of the 300,000 stones and how they fit together was lost.
The EFEO returned in 1995 and resumed the restoration effort. They carefully photographed and measured every stone, cross-referencing them with photographic archives dating back to 1910. The architect who had worked on the project in the 1960s was brought back, along with 30 local builders who had participated in Angkor-area restorations before the Khmer Rouge made such work a capital offense. The skilled memories of the experienced workers proved invaluable. Attempts at computer modeling were made, but they couldn’t compete with conservationist Mith Priem’s remarkable ability to spot patterns in the stones.
In 2011, Baphuon Temple reopened to the public, structurally sound for the first time since its restoration began, despite 10,000 blocks remaining unused, much like those extra screws from an IKEA furniture assembly that you never find a place for.
4. THE DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM
Without the slightest sense of irony, the Thames flood of January 7, 1928 submerged John Martin's 1822 apocalyptic painting of the eruption of Vesuvius. The painting, along with others, was damaged when floodwaters poured into the basement of the Tate Gallery in London. Soaked in Thames water and the detritus of five million people, The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum suffered major paint loss and had a large chunk torn out of the canvas. All that remained of Vesuvius was a void.
When the Tate curators initially found the painting, they rolled it up in tissue and placed it in storage, assuming the painting was lost for good. However, 82 years later, Tate curators weren't so sure. A planned exhibition on John Martin's apocalyptic vision prompted them to dig the rolled-up piece from storage and take another look. It wasn't as ruined as they had feared. Though it was dirty and flaking, the flakes remained attached to the canvas, allowing conservators to reattach the detached pieces.
The large gash in the painting posed another challenge. Without the central image of the erupting volcano, the artwork lost much of its narrative power. The Tate experts decided to confront the issue head-on and fill the void. Using Martin's preparatory sketch and a smaller version of the painting, restorer Sarah Maisey began the task. She didn’t intend to replicate Martin's style exactly or deceive viewers with her brushwork. Instead, she aimed to capture his essence while ensuring that, upon closer inspection, it was clear that two hands had worked on this masterpiece.
The final result is as vibrantly dramatic as any John Martin piece should be. It is also designed to be reversible, allowing future generations to restore the gash if they ever find our past acts of restoration too barbaric to bear.
5. THE TELL HALAF SCULPTURES
When German diplomat Max von Oppenheim first uncovered the 3000-year-old Aramaean city-state of Guzana at Tell Halaf in northern Syria in 1899, he lacked the necessary permits to recover the statues he had found. He returned 12 years later, fully authorized and generously funded by his father, but World War I hindered his ability to transport the statues and stele back to Germany. Finally, in 1927, Oppenheim was able to ship two-thirds of the artifacts to Berlin, where they were installed in a dedicated private museum—aptly named the Tell Halaf Museum with characteristic German precision.
The museum had a short life of only 16 years. On November 23, 1943, a British phosphorus bomb struck, burning it to the ground. The fire consumed all of the wood, limestone artifacts, and plaster casts. Although the statues and stele made of volcanic basalt survived the flames, the extreme heat caused them to shatter into thousands of pieces when firefighters attempted to extinguish the blaze with cold water.
Oppenheim was undeterred by the destruction. He persuaded Walter Andrae, the director of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at Berlin's Pergamon Museum, to recover the 27,000 shattered pieces. Although the fragments endured further damage from extreme cold and heat, by August 1944, nine truckloads of basalt remnants were stored in the basement of the Pergamon Museum.
The fragments lay untouched until after Germany's reunification, when the museum assessed whether the larger pieces could be reassembled. With financial support from the Oppenheim bank and the German Research Foundation, conservators at the Pergamon Museum began to reassemble as many statues as possible from the 27,000 basalt fragments, some as small as a fingernail and others weighing over a ton. Once again, computer modeling was abandoned in favor of manual puzzle-solving. In just 10 years, they managed to reassemble 25,000 pieces into 60 statues and stele. One of Max von Oppenheim's prized statues, an enthroned goddess unearthed during the 1912 excavation, was reconstructed from 1,800 pieces alone.
