Italian UNESCO World Heritage: Forms of Protection and Management Experiences

Abstract

Italy, with its 49 sites, it’s the country with the largest number of entries in the List of UNESCO World Heritage and none of them is in the list of properties in danger. The "Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention" point out, as a prerequisite for the preservation of the values recognized specifically to a site, the existence of an effective system of protection and  management. Safeguard and protection are by now issues entrenched in the Italian legislation and administrative practice while the theme of management as a system of synergy and coordination of actions and interests, sometimes conflicting, which affect more or less directly the safeguarding of assets, it is less historically consolidated. The extreme variability of the situations of national UNESCO heritage in terms of site typology, its size, number and typology of those involved in the management, puts each time in the position of having to find the most suitable form of "governance" and, sometimes, supplementary protection measures. The vast and diverse panorama of the UNESCO sites enabled and continually enables to develop and test particular solutions, which in turn can represent reference models.