Serhat DEMIR - Karadeniz Technical University, Dept. Of Civil Engineering, ۶۱۰۸۰ Trabzon/Turkey
Metin HUSEM

Historical buildings are the most important cultural heritage of a nation combining its past and present. They help us to understand our past clearly, having significant properties of their period. Some of these historical buildings have still been used since they were first built. On the other hand, some have important damage or destruction because of either natural conditions or careless usage of humans. Keeping cultural values alive and passing them to the future generations with their authentic qualifications is one of the most crucial issues of our time. That’s why, in order to pass these historical buildings to the future generations safe and sound, restoration and strengthening have been inevitable. Protection of these buildings has only been possible be increasing the resistance of the buildings. While this strengthening process, the historical characteristic properties of the building shouldn’t been spoiled. To lengthen a historical building’s life with restoration and strengthening the most important and difficult step is determining the present situation of the building, evaluating and defining technical and historical properties. It has to be known that this step is a long period because of very detailed studies and no single detail has to be ignored. In many countries, in the restoration and strengthening of the historical buildings, this step has been considered unnecessary. That’s why, in this article, damage types of historical buildings are investigated suitable for their historical characteristics and activity of restoration-strengthening methods for these damages are studied.

Historical building, protection, restoration, strengthening