18 April 2019 / Rural landscapes - Online resources

In 2019, the theme of the International Day on Monuments and Sites is Rural Landscapes – which is linked to the theme of the 2019 ICOMOS Scientific Symposium on Rural heritage to take place in October in Marrakesh, Morocco (see our page about the Symposium and the call for proposals).

What are rural landscapes?

In the ICOMOS “Principles concerning rural landscapes as heritage”, adopted by the ICOMOS General Assembly in 2017, rural landscapes are defined as “terrestrial and aquatic areas co-produced by human-nature interaction used for the production of food and other renewable natural resources, via agriculture, animal husbandry and pastoralism, fishing and aquaculture, forestry, wild food gathering, hunting, and extraction of other resources, such as salt.

Rural landscapes are multifunctional resources. At the same time, all rural areas have cultural meanings attributed to them by people and communities: all rural areas are landscapes.” Rural landscapes encompass an increasing accumulation of tangible and intangible heritage which is in constant adaptation to environmental, cultural, social, political and economic conditions. They are the most common type of continuing cultural landscape.

Download the 18 April 2019 presentation leaflet in: English - French - Spanish.

The ICOMOS Documentation Centre hase produced a selection of online and library resources on Rural Landscapes.

Download bibliography

Credits : © Flickr / Jayreel Bacurayo ; © Flickr / Office de Tourisme Mont Aigoual ;
©  Flickr / Jean Hatton ; Flickr / Cocoabiscuit ; © Flickr / Philip Robertson.