Philosophy of Conservation and Restoration;

Training; 20th Century Heritage; Underwater

Cultural Heritage; Vernacular Architecture;
Wall Paintings; and Wood. Obviously, not all of
these ICOMOS scientic committees are
concerned with the archaeological past.
Cross-References
UNESCO World Heritage List and
Imbalanced Properties: An African
Perspective
UNESCOs World Heritage List Process
World Heritage List: Criteria, Inscription, and
Representation
Further Reading
ICAHM. n.d. Function, roles, and responsibilities state-
ment. n.d. Available at: http://www.icomos.org/
icahm/orgchart/ICAHM_Function_OfcesandDuties.
pdf
ICOMOS. n.d. Introducing ICOMOS. Available at: http://
www.icomos.org/en/about-icomos/mission-and-vision/
mission-and-vision.
- n.d. ICOMOS mission. Available at: http://www.
icomos.org/index.php/en/about-icomos/mission-and-
vision/icomos-mission.
International Cultural Tourism
Charter Managing Tourism at Places
of Heritage Significance (1999)
Brian Long
Faculty of VCA & MCM, University of
Melbourne, Southbank, VIC, Australia
Introduction
Around the world local, regional, and interna-
tional tourism has grown signicantly in impor-
tance since the end of World War II. Tourism is
now a major employer in rural and urban areas
across the world. In many communities, it is now
one of the largest sources of economic activity.
The numerical growth of the middle class in
many emerging economies coupled with the
emergence of mass-market air travel means that
a greater proportion of the global population is
now able to enjoy leisure travel than ever before.
Similarly, the spread of mass communication
media, such as television and cinema, combined
with improved education in most countries has
stimulated a desire in many people to visit other
places and to experience other cultures.
While the early years of postwar mass tourism
often concentrated on outdoor leisure pursuits
and relaxation, the last 30 years have witnessed
a fragmentation and diversication of the tourism
industry. Consumer, adventure, family, sport,
cultural and eco-tourism are now recognized sec-
tors of the industry and they, too, contain further
subsectors. If we understand culture in the way
that anthropologists do as the way of life and
shared values of a particular community then all
tourism is cultural. Even a beachside holiday
takes place in the context of a certain way of life
and specic shared values. So the various forms
of tourism rarely exclude a mixture of objectives
on the part of travelers and visitors. Beach holi-
day makers may include in their holiday plans
a visit to a historic site or museum. People who
are primarily interested in experiencing the arts,
heritage, or historically signicant sites may also
want to spend time in a resort or on the ski elds.
Tourism operators, too, usually cater to vary-
ing needs. There are many ways to experience
any tourist site. When we talk, then, of cultural
tourism, it is a category that differs from other
types of tourism in its emphasis and prioritization
of the cultural aspects of the visitor experience.
Almost all travelers are cultural tourists in some
sense or at some time.
Cultural tourism can, however, be an area of
contention because many sites, objects, and prac-
tices of cultural signicance were never intended
to host large numbers of visitors. When poorly
managed, tourism can cause irreparable damage
to cultural places or artifacts. The desire to attract
visitors must be balanced by the need to preserve
artifacts, traditions, or sites for others. It is also
important that visitors respect and seek to under-
stand the cultures of other people. Conicts
between ideas of individual and group ownership
International Cultural Tourism Charter Managing Tourism 3975 I
I
of cultural artifacts, sites, and traditions also need
to be taken into consideration. While cultural
meaning and signicance is created by groups
of people, individual items or places may
rightfully belong to individuals whose rights
and interest may conict with those of the wider
community.
Cultural tourism is a growing sector, and
demand for tourist experiences with a cultural
focus is expected to continue growing
(OECD 2009). This growth is in part a reection
of todays demand for cultural authenticity. Vis-
itors to culturally signicant sites want rsthand
experience of signicant artifacts and places
(Schouten 2007). This desire, however, also
creates challenges for custodians and managers
of cultural and environmental heritage. Just as the
sheer number of visitors to heritage and culturally
signicant sites may threaten some of them, so,
too, the demand to experience the real thing
poses challenges for their preservation, espe-
cially when the effects of age-related deteriora-
tion, exposure to environmental damage, and
changing cultural understandings are taken into
account. Once again, a careful balancing of the
demands of visitors and of preservation is
required (ICOMOS 1994). The Charter has at its
heart the objective of balancing these different
interests.
Definition
Cultural tourism is a term that refers to tourism
that has as its primary focus the experience of
artistic, historical, or ceremonial aspects of
places, artifacts, or practices.
The International Cultural Tourism Charter
Managing Tourism at Places of Heritage Signif-
icance (1999) was adopted by the International
Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS)
at its twelfth General Assembly in Mexico in
October 1999.
ICOMOS was called into being in 1964
in response to a proposal from the United
Nations Educational, Scientic and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO). It is an international,
nongovernment, membership-based organization
most of whose members are professionals in the
heritage, architecture, archaeology, and historical
sectors. ICOMOS advises UNESCO and national
governments on matters of world, national, and
local heritage, and it has adopted a range of
charters, resolutions, and declarations concerning
aspects of cultural and environmental heritage
protection and management. It has various scien-
tic committees including one for cultural
tourism.
Key Issues/Current Debates/Future
Directions/Examples
The International Cultural Tourism Charter
(1999) consists of six principles, seven objec-
tives, and an introductory statement of its ethos.
This opening section explains the thinking behind
the document and provides examples of cultural
and natural heritage. It also makes clear that the
Charter takes a universalist position on culture
and cultural heritage. This position asserts that
cultures share certain universal values and that
heritage belongs to all people. It is, though,
a position that reects Western Enlightenment
ideas about the universality of human experience
and culture and is one that is not shared by some
other intellectual traditions.
The Introduction to the Charter further makes
it clear that we live in an increasingly globalized
world. Globalization is often seen as a threat to
local cultural traditions and in recent years
a number of international initiatives have been
implemented with the aimof protecting the diver-
sity of cultures around the world (UNESCO
2005). The Charter Ethos argues that people
everywhere are challenged to preserve cultural
diversity and conserve, present, and interpret
cultural heritage. The Charter, nevertheless, rec-
ognizes that at the practical level these tasks
normally fall to local communities. One of the
principal aims of the Charter is to provide guid-
ance to the people of these communities.
A further objective is to encourage the tourism
industry to respect and enhance the culture of
host communities. In many respects, cultural
tourism brings with it inherent conict potential,
I 3976 International Cultural Tourism Charter Managing Tourism
particularly between the interests of visitors and
tourism operators on the one hand, and local
communities and cultural custodians on the
other. The third of the Charters objectives is to
foster dialogue between conservation interests
and the tourism industry. One of the desired
results of this dialogue is the development of
management plans that sets goals and strategies
for the presentation and interpretation of heri-
tage places and cultural activities, and this is
encouraged in the fourth of the objectives.
The rst of the principles contained in the
Charter notes the importance of cultural tourism
for cultural exchange and calls for the conserva-
tion of cultural heritage so as to provide visitors
and host communities with rsthand experience
of cultural sites. The four subsections of Principle
1 deal with the contemporary signicance of nat-
ural and cultural heritage, the need for the expla-
nation and interpretation of cultural and natural
signicance, the fostering of the awareness
needed to ensure the survival of heritage and the
diversity of cultural meanings attributed to some
places.
Principle 2 addresses the potential for conict
between the competing demands made on heri-
tage sites. Its rst subsection deals with cultural
heritage as a source of cultural diversity and
social development. It calls for policy measures
in a range of elds to ensure the protection of
cultural manifestations. Later subsections deal
with questions of authenticity, conict resolution,
the use of local materials and traditions in con-
servation programs, the development of manage-
ment plans, and the implementation of evaluation
programs to assess the impact of tourism on sites
of cultural signicance.
In many cases, the concerns of host commu-
nities and visitors to places of cultural interest can
be in conict. For a long time visitors to Uluru in
Central Australia thought a visit to this iconic site
was best capped with a climb up the famous rock.
Many people would still like to do so.
But climbing on Uluru conicts with the
cultural importance of the site for the local com-
munity as well as causing environmental dam-
age and, hence, visitors are discouraged from
doing so. In other places, host communities
require visitors to dress in a manner appropriate
to the meaning of a site, to remove their shoes, to
refrain from taking photographs, to maintain
silence, and so on in efforts to ensure that tourism
does not harm the cultural traditions and mean-
ings of a site or to minimize physical damage.
Balancing these requirements with the legitimate
interests and desires of visitors is one of the key
objectives of the Charter, and one that is embod-
ied, in particular, in subsections 2.2 and 2.6.
The authenticity of the visitors experience is
a crucial element for most cultural tourists.
Indeed, the search for cultural traditions and prac-
tices that are considered more authentic than
their own is a key element of cultural tourism for
many people, particularly in Western countries.
But when considered more closely, authenticity
becomes a contentious concept. The materials
used in many historically important buildings
are prone to natural deterioration and may need
to be replaced. The actual wood we see when we
visit a centuries-old Asian temple today may
actually be quite recent. Similarly, in many Euro-
pean cities, numerous historic buildings were
reconstructed in the aftermath of World War II
and while they may appear much older, they are
not strictly authentic or particularly old. In
recent years, this feature of cultural heritage con-
servation has taken on new dimensions in Berlin
where there has been a lively debate about
reconstructing the Baroque palace (Stadtschloss)
after it was damaged during the war and its ruins
removed in 1950. Few people would argue that
the resulting urban wasteland should remain
unused. But the idea of rebuilding from scratch
a (pseudo) Baroque palace is in itself an interest-
ing commentary on the contemporary thirst
for heritage even if it is not genuinely
authentic. Subsections 2.4 and 2.5 of the Charter
call for the retention of the authenticity of
heritage places (2.4) and for infrastructure
developments at heritage sites to use local mate-
rials while respecting local traditions and styles
in architecture.
The third of the six principles deals with the
visitors experience at places of cultural tourism.
It contains four subsections each of which gives
guidance on ways in which the visitors
International Cultural Tourism Charter Managing Tourism 3977 I
I
experience can be enhanced. It is essential for the
economic success of cultural tourism that visitors
nd a particular experience rewarding, authentic,
and well managed. Visitors are usually discern-
ing and well-informed people who will quickly
turn elsewhere if their experience of a particular
heritage site, practice, or artifact is articial, dis-
respectful, or exploitative. They also have myriad
needs that vary from person to person and they
generally value experiences that offer visitors
exibility and individuality. Subsection 3.2,
thus, calls for visitors to be able to pace their
visit to a heritage site at their own discretion,
while subsection 3.1 calls for visitors to be pro-
vided with high-quality information on the sig-
nicance of a particular item of heritage.
The Charter stipulates the various elements of
a cultural experience that visitors should be able
to expect. They also have responsibilities,
though. Successful cultural tourism is able to
balance the desire of visitors to experience
places, artifacts, and practices of cultural signif-
icance with the right of host communities and the
interest of all parties in the preservation and con-
servation of natural and cultural heritage for
posterity.
The rights of host communities who are
involved in cultural tourism are the focus of prin-
ciples 4 and 5. In particular, these principles call
for the rights of communities to restrict access to
sites, cultural practices, and artifacts to be
respected. Cultural tourism has a strong univer-
salist element. Western Enlightenment thinking
holds that cultural traditions, sites, and practices
should be universally and equally accessible to
everyone. It rejects the idea of knowledge that
can or should be restricted to certain people based
on community membership, religious faith, or
gender. But more recent ethical debate has led
to a realization that Western thinking cannot rea-
sonably be imposed on peoples and communities
that do not share its tenets.
Subsection 4.1 deals with the rights of host
communities and traditional owners to contribute
to management plans, policies, and protocols
concerning places of cultural tourism. Making
host communities the primary beneciaries of
cultural tourism is at the heart of Principle 5.
When well managed, the benets of cultural tour-
ism can be numerous and substantial. They
extend beyond the purely economic and can
include employment, educational, intercultural,
and intergenerational dividends. Subsection 5.2
even advocates for gender equality in the distri-
bution of benets that accrue to local communi-
ties from cultural tourism. The reinvestment of
a proportion of revenues earned from cultural
tourism in the protection and conservation of
places of signicance is the central objective of
subsection 5.3.
The interpretation of cultural heritage and its
presentation to visitors is a critical element of
successful cultural tourism. It may also be an
area of debate and controversy. Sometimes the
cultural signicance of a site, artifact, or practice
may no longer be fully understood. In such cases,
interpretation may be largely speculative and it
may be difcult to separate fact from ction and
mythology. Recent research may even challenge
or contradict long-cherished understandings and
interpretations. In other cases, the same site or
artifact can have different and even conicting
meanings to different communities. Former bat-
tleelds, for example, may represent the site of
a famous and nationally important military vic-
tory for one community while arousing painful
memories of defeat, loss of life, and national
subjugation for another community. Sensitive,
respectful, and balanced interpretation of such
sites is vital if they are to contribute to the peace-
ful coexistence of communities and nations in our
time. These examples all attest to the central role
played in cultural tourismby cultural interpreters.
Subsections 5.4 and 5.5 of the Charter deal with
interpreters and call for them to be drawn from
host communities so as to develop skills among
community members and to promote interest
among local communities in their cultural heri-
tage and its preservation.
The sixth and nal of the Charters principles
deals with the protection of natural and cultural
heritage in the context of cultural tourism. It calls
for controls on excessive visitor numbers at sites
of cultural tourism and proposes that host com-
munities encourage visitors to take a wider view
of the region in which a particular attraction is
I 3978 International Cultural Tourism Charter Managing Tourism
located. The subsections also call for host com-
munities to encourage appropriate behavior
among visitors by ensuring that the information
provided deals with the heritage of a place or
community in a responsible fashion.
The International Cultural Tourism Charter is,
by dint of its legal status as charter, not an
enforceable legal instrument. It sets out princi-
ples of good practice but is, in essence,
aspirational.
The Charter is narrow in its understanding of
cultural tourism. Its primary focus is clearly on
cultural and natural heritage sites. Cultural tour-
ism involving intangible heritage, such as perfor-
mances, ceremonies, and rituals, is not explicitly
covered in the Charter. Nor does the Charter deal
explicitly with movable cultural artifacts. These
features reect the Charters own parentage as
a document produced by the International Coun-
cil on Monuments and Sites.
The Charter makes occasional reference to the
protection and conservation of natural heritage,
but does not make clear the difference between
the two.
The Charter is available in English, French,
Spanish, Greek, Mandarin, and Dutch and can be
accessed via the ICOMOS website at http://www.
international.icomos.org/charters.htm.
Cross-References
Authenticity and Pastness in Cultural Heritage
Management
International Council on Monuments and Sites
(ICOMOS): Scientic Committees and
Relationship to UNESCO
Interpretation (Including Historic
Reenactments): Current Approaches
UNESCO (1972) and Malta (1992)
Conventions
References
ICOMOS. 1994. The Nara Document on Authenticity.
Paris: ICOMOS.
OECD. 2009. The impact of culture on tourism. Paris:
OECD.
SCHOUTEN, F. 2007. Cultural tourism: between authenticity
and globalization, in G. Richards (ed.) Cultural tour-
ism global and local perspectives: 25-38. Binghamton
(NY): The Haworth Press.
UNESCO. 2005. Convention on the Protection and Pro-
motion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. Paris:
UNESCO.
Further Reading
EUROPA NOSTRA. 2006. Malta Declaration on cultural
tourism: its encouragement and control. The Hague:
Europa Nostra.
DI GIOVINE, M. A. 2009. The heritage-scape: UNESCO,
world heritage, and tourism. Lanham: Lexington Books.
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON MONUMENTS AND SITES. n.d.
Available at: http://icomos.org/.
WORLD TOURISM ORGANIZATION. n.d. Available at: http://
unwto.org/en
International Heritage Conservation
Principles: Historical Overview
Anja Merbach
1
and Kerstin Stamm
2
1
Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus,
Cottbus, Germany
2
University of Bonn, Berlin, Germany
Introduction
To keep and maintain what we value and to hand
it down to future generations is an aspect intrinsic
to human development and deeply rooted in
all cultures worldwide. Modern times saw the
development of the concepts of heritage and con-
servation, which, as an inseparable part of build-
ing and preserving the cultural identity of
a group, today have been established as critical
elements of national culture. International princi-
ples on preservation and conservation try to build
a bridge for conservation efforts worldwide and
aim to establish a common understanding on
what to preserve and how, and more generally,
on the meaning of heritage for society as a whole.
Definition
The term International Principles of Conserva-
tion and Preservation is mostly used to describe
International Heritage Conservation Principles: Historical Overview 3979 I
I