The city and its cultural properties: the urban dimension of the protection in the scope of international documents.

Abstract

The recognition of the cultural value of urban sites and the theoretical principles to be observed in the treatment of the same ones are the acquired knowledge addressed in international documents on the subject, as the Venice Charter (1964), the Declaration of Amsterdam (1975) and the Washington Charter (1987), among others. The analysis of the elaboration processes of some of these documents is very salutary. When delineating the gradual recognition of urban specificities and when proposing guidelines for its protection, these documents elucidate the cognitive processes involved in the consolidation of the concept of urban heritage and put in evidence the permanence of the same difficulties in contemporary conservation practice.