Comprehensive documentation of Nepal’s cultural heritage approved

Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, has awarded almost €2.5 million to the
Nepal Heritage Documentation Project (NHDP). The new grant will continue and expand the project for six years beyond its pilot phase (2018-2020), documenting endangered historical monuments in the Kathmandu valley. The NHDP is led by Prof.
Christiane Brosius (chair of
Visual and Media Anthropology at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies (
HCTS)) and Prof. em.
Axel Michaels (Classical Indology, South Asian Institute (
SAI)) at Heidelberg University. The project is a collaboration between the University and the
Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

The NHDP creates comprehensive digital records of Nepal’s endangered historical monuments. These include temples, monasteries, palaces, and other historical buildings. The NHDP is the first project to comprehensively photograph, describe, survey, and analyse these monuments, and to make the records available in an
open database. The new grant will continue the work in the Kathmandu valley, and will expand it to western Nepal and other places that are culturally and historically related to the Kathmandu valley. The project aims at documenting and inventorying more than 2,000 monuments, 2,500 inscriptions, and 8,000 objects, as well as the unique intangible cultural heritage associated with the monuments: rituals, festivals, and other social and religious practices. The project will also focus on the monuments endangered by earthquakes and urban change that have not yet been thoroughly documented. This initiative has already played an important role, for example, in the reconstruction of monuments after the devastating earthquakes of 2015.

The data resulting from the documentation will be added to the Digital Archive of Nepalese Arts and Architecture (
DANAM) and Heidelberg University Library’s image database,
HeidICON. The team in Germany and Nepal comprises some 20 experts from the fields of history, architecture, ethnology, Indology, and heritage management. IT specialists ensure high quality data management. The project works with
Heidelberg University Library, the
HCTS, and the
Institute for Spatial Information and Measurement Technology at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz. In Nepal, the NHDP collaborates with the
Saraf Foundation for Himalayan Traditions and Culture, the
Department of Archaeology of the Nepalese government, the
Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust,
UNESCO Nepal and other partners.

The Director General of the Department of Archaeology in Nepal, Damodar Gautam, has commented on the Nepal Heritage Documentation Project: "Such a detailed documentation will stand as a landmark not only for the preservation of potentially threatened cultural heritage but also for handing down the knowledge of this rich and extraordinary heritage to future generations, especially in and of Nepal.” According to Christiane Brosius, the project will "greatly strengthen the Asian studies and transcultural focus of the University of Heidelberg, especially research on cultural heritage, and will also have an impact on teaching."

Arcadia is a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. It supports charities and scholarly institutions that preserve cultural heritage and the environment. It also supports projects that promote open access, and all of its awards are granted on the condition that the materials produced are made available for free online. Since 2002, Arcadia has awarded more than $678 million to projects around the world.