Workshop on Tourism and Heritage Dissonances

This workshop is organized by the Una Europa Self-Steering Committee Cultural Heritage in the framework of the OurWorldHeritage initiative.

Not all heritage sites, including World Heritage sites, are places of aesthetic delectation, bear exceptional testimonies to a cultural tradition or to a civilization, are masterpieces of human creative genius, or exhibit interchanges of human values, developments in architecture or technology, arts, town-planning or landscape design. Some are associated with traumatic events, with conflicts and with violence perpetrated by humans to other humans. This is for example the case for several UNESCO sites, mainly listed under criterion (vi) related to memories of colonialism and slavery, conflicts, wars, nuclear disasters. Many other heritage sites have a national or local importance because of the messages they convey rather than for their materiality. These sites put specific questions in terms of their – often - conflicting narratives, of their interpretation to different audiences and of their visitor management. This seminar aims at analyzing these issues, based on several examples of heritage sites.