LAUSR

abstract:In 2003 the Israel Land Administration decided, for the first time, to restore a residential quarter in Old Acre. The rehabilitation process marked a turning point in Acre's conservation. Hitherto, the "monumental" narrative of the Israeli national project stressed the archaeological ethos of the Crusader city. The new approach engaged instead a "social" narrative, requiring a focused attention on the Ottoman city. During a pilot project the flagship building of the quarter was evacuated, massively renovated, and re-populated with its former Palestinian residents. The controversial restoration of the building's appearance back to its bourgeois Ottoman phase, a period hitherto neglected by Israeli government agencies, is a lens through which we examine the convergence of three distinct narratives—monumental, social, and global—that guide Israeli interventions in Old Acre. Our focus is on the agency of conservation in the competition between them on the meaning and character of Acre's urban space.