The Red Monastery Church conservation project is one of ARCE's longest and most successful endeavors in preservation. The Research Center administered the first major campaign of conservation, art historical study, and publication of the Red Monastery church sanctuary.

Begun in 2002 under the USAID funded EAP grant, the important work of revealing the magnificent painted surfaces of this unique treasure from Late Antiquity has continued through the subsequent EAC grant which ended this year. During the year 2013-14, the Red Monastery church has been prepared for display to visitors and for use as a church by the Coptic community as a last, but very critical, phase of conservation.

This final stage of work has been directed and managed on site by conservation architect Nicholas Warner.
The success of the project has been further assured by the efforts of Dina Bakhoum who leads a community liaison initiative aimed at integrating the conservation project into the local community.

Inside the triconch sanctuary, a new limestone floor was laid, new wooden doors and metal handrails were installed, a new altar table was built, and a new system of LED lighting was designed and fitted in collaboration with Philips Egypt.
The entire church was rewired and a completely new electrical system put in place to support the lighting as well as the sound and video equipment required by the church.

The church of Saints Bishai and Bigol, the "Red Monastery," was the heart of a large monastic community, in a region known as an important center for the ascetic life in the 5th century, C.E. It is an astonishingly rare example of the coloristic intensity of late antique monuments in Egypt.
In this church, late antique paintings cover about eighty percent of the walls, niches, columns, pilasters, pediments and apses.
The building's elaborate figural and ornamental paintings, combined with extensive sculpture and monumental architecture, make it the most important historical church in Egypt.
audemars piguet replica
Wall painting conservation by Luigi De Cesaris and Alberto Sucato has continued to reveal new and unexpected surprises. The tri-conch basilica includes four phases of Late Antique painting, and at least one from the Medieval period. (*)
 

(*) RED MONASTERY, SOHAG