About Kharitati

Why this archive exists

Palestine holds over five thousand years of continuous habitation. Its mosques, churches, markets, and homes are the physical record of that history — the threshold a person crossed to pray, the courtyard where olive oil was pressed, the doorway a grandmother opened a thousand times.

Many of these places have been damaged or destroyed. Kharitati exists to record them. Not to mourn them — to remember them precisely, with the rigour an archive demands. Each place is to be documented with verified coordinates, photographs from before and after, testimony from those who knew it, and citations to the institutional sources that confirm the record.

How we document

Current status: Kharitati is in an early phase. The records shown today come from a 2020 survey of Gaza's Old City carried out by our own team: 231 historic buildings, each with its name in Arabic and English, its quarter and whether it is a public or private historic building. Their condition is not yet recorded, and photographs, video and satellite imagery are being added place by place.

Because the survey is our own work, its places are published as verified records. Any place added later that has not yet been confirmed against its sources is clearly labelled as such on the map and on its page.

Sources include UNESCO heritage listings, UNOSAT satellite damage assessments, ICOMOS Palestine documentation, the Institute for Palestine Studies, the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, and verified press coverage. Where testimony is included, it is collected with explicit consent from the person sharing it.

Places in Gaza and other places of active conflict are documented through trusted intermediaries to protect those collecting the material on the ground.

How to cite

Each place has a permanent URL at kharitati.org/place/[place-name]. Journalists, researchers, and academics are welcome to cite Kharitati records.

Contact

For contributions, partnerships, or questions, write to hello@kharitati.org.

For sensitive matters or to contribute material from conflict areas, reach us on Signal at the address listed in our editorial standards document, available on request.

Acknowledgements

Kharitati is built on the work of many — the heritage organisations who have documented these places for decades, the journalists and witnesses who recorded what happened, the institutions whose archives we cite. We are grateful to all of them.

A living archive of Palestinian heritage
أرشيف حي للتراث الفلسطيني