Destruction of Cultural Heritage in 19th Century France examines the fate of the building stock and prominent ruins of France (especially Roman survivals) in the 19th century, supported by contemporary documentation and archives, largely provided through the publications of scholarly societies. The book describes the enormous extent of the destruction of monuments, providing an antidote to the triumphalism and concomitant amnesia which in modern scholarship routinely present the 19th century as one of concern for the past. It charts the modernising impulse over several centuries, detailing the archaeological discoveries made (and usually destroyed) as walls were pulled down and town interiors re-planned, plus the brutal impact on landscape and antiquities as railways were laid out. Heritage was largely scorned, and identity found in modernity, not the past.

Changing Heritage presents the most comprehensive analysis of heritage issues available today. Critically analysing the complexity of the current and forthcoming issues faced by heritage, it presents insightful directions for the future. Drawing on the author’s many years of experience working in senior positions at UNESCO, the book presents discussions of heritage sites all around the world. Today, our cultural and natural legacies face significant threats due to social and economic developments, political pressures, and unresolved historical issues. This book delves into these threats from two distinct perspectives: internal tensions and external pressures. The internal tensions include the disregard for human rights and gender equality; the increasing exploitation of heritage for political purposes; the development of post-colonial perspectives; and the necessity to reassess the established notion of "universal value." External pressures stem from global processes, unsustainable tourism, political conflicts, ethnic clashes, and religious strife that are causing destruction in numerous parts of the world. Examining the dynamics between heritage and these internal tensions and external pressures, Bandarin offers insights into the challenges faced and emphasises the imperative role of civil society in safeguarding the value of heritage for present and future generations. Changing Heritage explores a wide range of issues surrounding the crisis in heritage management on an international level. It will be essential reading for heritage scholars, students, and professionals

A richly illustrated book exploring the origins of the modern fascination for heritage, comparing preservation in France, Germany and England.

During the nineteenth century, a change developed in the way architectural objects from the distant past were viewed by contemporaries. Such edifices, be they churches, castles, chapels or various other buildings, were not only admired for their aesthetic values, but also for the role they played in ancient times, and their role as reminders of important events from the national past. Architectural heritage often was (and still is) an important element of nation building. Authors address the process of building national myths around certain architectural objects. National narratives are questioned, as is the position architectural heritage played in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.

What happens when UNESCO heritage conventions are ratified by a state? How do UNESCO’s global efforts interact with preexisting local, regional and state efforts to conserve or promote culture? What new institutions emerge to address the mandate? The contributors to this volume focus on the work of translation and interpretation that ensues once heritage conventions are ratified and implemented. With seventeen case studies from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and China, the volume provides comparative evidence for the divergent heritage regimes generated in states that differ in history and political organization. The cases illustrate how UNESCO’s aspiration to honor and celebrate cultural diversity diversifies itself. The very effort to adopt a global heritage regime forces myriad adaptations to particular state and interstate modalities of building and managing heritage.

What was the personality of 19th-century Paris? To answer that question, this book eschews the conventional narrative and chronological route taken by most histories of Paris. Instead, it thematically analyses the complex personality traits of Paris from the onset of the Revolution of 1789 to the beginning of the Great War. Starting with the topographical and cultural legacies that late 18th-century Paris inherited from its foundation in pre-Roman and Roman times and from its medieval infancy and early-modern adolescence, The Personality of Paris unpacks the social and material complexity of the 19th-century city. It considers the role of immigration in the making of Parisians and in the city's growth from half a million in 1801 to almost three million in 1911. It examines the making of its distinctive landscape through the construction of monuments and architectural icons, through its massive re-modelling by Napoléon III and Baron Haussmann, through its five world exhibitions, through its emphasis on food, fashion and leisure, and through the ways in which Parisians sought rural release from urban pressure. Finally, the book considers the self-harm done to the person of 19th-century Paris by revolutions and wars and the damage inflicted on it by 20th-century hubristic politicians and architects.

Explores how the idea of rare books was shaped by collectors, traders and libraries from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Using examples from across Europe, David McKitterick looks at how rare books developed from being desirable objects of largely private interest to become public and even national concerns.

Offers a broad and vivid overview of the culture of collecting in France over the long nineteenth-century.

A fascinating case study of the archaeological site at Murujuga, Australia Located in the Dampier Archipelago of Western Australia, Murujuga is the single largest archaeological site in the world. It contains an estimated one million petroglyphs, or rock art motifs, produced by the Indigenous Australians who have historically inhabited the archipelago. To date, there has been no comprehensive survey of the site's petroglyphs or those who created them. Since the 1960s, regional mining interests have caused significant damage to this site, destroying an estimated 5 to 25 percent of the petroglyphs in Murujuga. Today, Murujuga holds the unenviable status of being one of the most endangered archaeological sites in the world. José Antonio González Zarandona provides a full postcolonial analysis of Murujuga as well as a geographic and archaeological overview of the site, its ethnohistory, and its considerable significance to Indigenous groups, before examining the colonial mistreatment of Murujuga from the seventeenth century to the present. Drawing on a range of postcolonial perspectives, Zarandona reads the assaults on the rock art of Murujuga as instances of what he terms "landscape iconoclasm": the destruction of art and landscapes central to group identity in pursuit of ideological, political, and economic dominance. Viewed through the lens of landscape iconoclasm, the destruction of Murujuga can be understood as not only the result of economic pressures but also as a means of reinforcing—through neglect, abandonment, fragmentation, and even certain practices of heritage preservation—the colonial legacy in Western Australia. Murujuga provides a case study through which to examine, and begin to reject, archaeology's global entanglement with colonial intervention and the politics of heritage preservation.

This collection investigates the wide array of local antiquarian practices that developed across Europe in the early modern era. Breaking new ground, it explores local concepts of antiquity in a period that has been defined as a uniform 'Renaissance'. Contributors take a novel approach to the revival of the antique in different parts of Italy, as well as examining other, less widely studied antiquarian traditions in France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Britain and Poland. They consider how real or fictive ruins, inscriptions and literary works were used to demonstrate a particular idea of local origins, to rewrite history or to vaunt civic pride. In doing so, they tackle such varied subjects as municipal antiquities collections in Southern Italy and France, the antiquarian response to the pagan, Christian and Islamic past on the Iberian Peninsula, and Netherlandish interest in megalithic ruins thought to be traces of a prehistoric race of Giants.