The World Monuments Watch List is an international program of the World Monuments Fund, a public organization that has been monitoring endangered monuments since 1965, drawing public attention to this problem and directing timely financial assistance for their preservation.
A commission of eminent experts at the international level has been compiling every two years since 1995 "List of one hundred monuments in greatest danger" on the basis of submissions from national governments, humanitarian organizations and individuals.
The list for 2004 was presented the other day. It includes structures from all continents; in Russia, according to WMF, three buildings are in greatest danger: the Chinese palace in Oranienbaum (it is threatened by groundwater), the communal house for the employees of the People's Commissariat for Finance in Moscow, built according to the project of M. Ginzbug, and the Perm-36 camp (1946), the only one preserved intact since the time of the Gulag. In Turkey, the ruins of the ancient city of Ephesus are under threat, in Great Britain, in particular, the house of the famous collector Stowe and Strawberry Hill, the neo-Gothic estate of the writer Horatio Walpole. In Egypt, there are the ruins of the ancient capital of the country, Hierakonpolis (2nd half of the 4th millennium BC), etc. "Colossi of Memnon" in West Thebes. In Ukraine - the ruins of the Greek city of Panticapaeum in the Crimea.
