Conservation Strategy for Serai Dalan Deraz in Isfahan, Iran

One of a country's most precious resources is its heritage and history. It is a part that would be non-renewable due to its complicated nature, thus ongoing conservation and awareness efforts are necessary to ensure its lasting appeal and values as well as rising operational revenues. Iran's traditional Bazaar has played a role as an economic, social, and cultural institution for a long time, as a part of the long-lasting Iranian cultural heritage, and is rightly considered a living cultural heritage. Usually, in the Bazaar, we can find different serais which are houses consisting of chambers and in some cases a place for accommodation of the merchants. Isfahan city is one of the important cities in the center of Iran's plateau there are numerous serais around its great Bazaar and this research is trying to propose a conservation strategy for one of the serais in Isfahan called Serai Dalan Deraz. For the case study, a process of conservation strategy will be proposed, using the “Management and development plans for Cultural Heritage" proposed by UNESCO. Accordingly, this objective required gathering broad information on the province of Isfahan, including its history, demographics, as well as other aspects. Then, extensive research on caravanserai and bazaars' history and architecture plus obtaining all the available data on Serai Dalan Deraz in order to make an assessment of its authenticity and current state. Moreover, to make an adaptive analysis a glance at the UNESCO world heritage sites that have been inscribed as caravanserai and bazaar (or in some cases as a part of a complex) is made. By accomplishing this research, some ideas for heritages that are facing deterioration and deprivation are propounded.