Monitoring the management of World Heritage Sites: the Italian contribution

The conservation of monuments and sites has a long tradition in Europe dating back to late 19th century, however it was only by mid 20th century that historic centres' protection became an issue and urban conservation legislation was introduced. On these grounds UNESCO and ICOMOS developed in more recent times their Charts and Recommendations. Urban heritage protection dealing initially with the physical conservation of historic sites it was extended in the 1980s into functional conservation, with the aim to counteract gentrification, and since 1990s it is principally focusing on the protection of the social and cultural characteristics of places endangered by mass tourism and the disneylandisation of heritage. This phenomena is getting more and more evident, and riskious, for places having high touristic visibility, like those ones recognized as World Heritage Sites by the UNESCO convention for the protection of world natural and cultural heritage (1972). In this context the monitoring of conservation interventions and policies of the impact of mass tourism in heritage sites have become a major tool for a sustainable conservation and development. This paper intends to approach and develop those topics on the basis of two major Italian approaches on the subject of monitoring of the ongoing management practices and experiences in heritage cities. On one hand, some recent efforts in evaluating the monitoring of World Heritage Sites and the same value of the World Heritage status, and, on the other, the "Preserving Places" approach elaborated by the ICVBC for evaluating tourist impact flows in historic centres.