Heritage is chosen, not simply inherited from whatever the past left behind
Not every relic of earlier generations counts as heritage. Societies pick what to keep, from cathedral frescos and folk songs to born-digital files and endangered landscapes. The legal shield around those choices grew out of an Austrian empress, a Civil War army code and a string of treaties culminating at The Hague.
Heritage splits into three broad kinds. Tangible heritage covers buildings, monuments, archives, books, artworks and artefacts. Intangible heritage means folklore, customs, language, values and know-how, the things a community keeps alive through practice, which makes them far harder to safeguard than objects. Natural heritage adds countryside, wildlife and geological features, along with cultural landscapes where nature and human meaning overlap.
Physical heritage is sorted further into what can and cannot move. A church counts as immovable, and so do the organ, stained glass and frescos built into it, along with industrial sites and historic housing. Books, clothing, machines and portable art count as movable. A newer category, digital heritage, gathers databases, images, sound and software, both scanned originals and material that never existed on paper. Researchers have even used 3D scanning and photogrammetry to piece together broken Graeco-Roman funerary masks.
Protecting heritage in wartime has deep roots. Maria Theresa, who ruled Austria and lived from 1717 to 1780, issued rules that fed into modern law, and the Congress of Vienna in 1814 and 1815 insisted that art should not be carried off from its home in war. The Lieber Code of 1863 bound the Union Army to similar restraint. A draft agreement on the customs of war emerged in Brussels in 1874, and a peace conference called by Tsar Nicholas II followed in the Netherlands in 1899.
The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 established that cultural property should be immune from attack. The Roerich Pact followed in 1935, and in 1954, prompted by UNESCO, states signed a new Hague convention dedicated to shielding cultural property during armed conflict. Today UNESCO, the United Nations and Blue Shield International work against looting, illicit digs and theft from churches and museums, while preserved sites underpin much of the global tourist economy.
Source: Cultural heritage
