1 December. It is with great sorrow that ICCROM has learnt that Jerko Marasović, a long-time collaborator and friend of ICCROM, has passed away in Croatia in May 2009.

Prof. Dr. Jerko Marasović was trained as architect, and he dedicated his whole life to the research and rehabilitation of the architectural and urban heritage of Split. There he worked particularly on Emperor Diocletian's palace, dealing with all the different tasks that ranged from architectural and archaeological research to designing rehabilitation projects and the supervision of the restoration works. He was also active in education and training in the protection of monuments and sites, and was appointed professor for the postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb. Many of his numerous students became later leading experts in the field.

His personal working experience was crowned by the development of a survey methodology on the architectural and urban heritage, which he presented in his Ph.D. thesis and which has been recently published in Croatian and French (La Méthodologie d'élaboration du patrimoine bâti). A particular contribution was his study of the original appearance and presentation of the Diocletian's palace in Split identifying the different levels, spatial and functional relationships and infrastructures. He is the author of several studies, books and articles. His precise architectural survey of the historic core of Split continues to be the basis for restoration and rehabilitation, and his methodologies have been widely diffused. He also invented (and manufactured) a mechanical device for the construction of perspective drawings (in 1984 before the introduction of computers), which facilitated making precise three dimensional presentations of the development in historic urban areas. In this way he put new standards for the presentation of the research results making them comprehensible for wider population.

For many years, he was one of the keen collaborators of ICCROM in research and educational programs regarding the built heritage. As the Director of Post-Graduate Studies of the University, Jerko Marasović, together with his younger brother Tomislav, was a permanent reference for conservation issues in the Former Yugoslavia. This included for example collaboration in the study that was carried out by the participants of the ICCROM Architectural Conservation Course in Trogir, in 1974.

updated on: 1 December, 2009