Inventory and cultural mapping of Sultanate’s architectural and urban heritage

In 2008 the NGO “Collectif du patrimoine des Comores” launched an inventory and cultural mapping project of the architectural and urban heritage of the Sultanates of the Comoros, with technical and financial support from the World Heritage Centre within the framework of the France-UNESCO Cooperation Agreement.
The Comoros put the Historic Sultanates on their Tentative List in 2007.
In order to better understand and safeguard the architectural, urban and landscape heritage of the Comoros, a cultural heritage inventory was produced. This cultural mapping project aims to create the required documentation to establish a corpus of graphic documents useful to the understanding and safeguarding, conservation and protection of heritage as well as to develop strategic planning tools.
This project was carried out by the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et du Paysage de Lille, ENSAPL (school of architecture and landscape in Lille).The data collecting and field work was carried out in nine sites spread out on the three islands of the Union of the Comoros.
Further studies and identification of sources and archives should be carried out to provide more detailed historical material. This documentation could be used for the preparation of a nomination proposal for the World Heritage List.