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“The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) seeks to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity. This is embodied in an international treaty called the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted by UNESCO in 1972. What makes the concept of World Heritage exceptional is its universal application. World Heritage sites belong to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located”.
Statement of outstanding Universal value
the attention of the first English and German travellers. The second was in 1864, the year the travel log of the Englishmen J.Gilbert and G.C.Churchill, entitled “The Dolomite Mountains”, was published. The success of this popular book, presented the mountains to the public at large and extended the name “Dolomites” from the mineral to describe the whole region. Alpine literature contributed to the universal adoption of the name Dolomites, not only in common use but also for official cartography, with the guide “The Eastern Alps” by J.Ball in 1868. Thus the Dolomites can be perfectly interpreted both scientifically and aesthetically and therefore their inscription in the UNESCO World Heritage List is deliberately proposed for their geological-geomorphological and aesthetic-landscape values simultaneously. As the history of their discovery explains, these two criteria are indissolubly linked, just as the tie between scientific interest and love of natural beauty of their “discoverers” is inseparable.
Traveller and alpine guides at Santner pass (F. Dantone, about 1870)
To date UNESCO has listed 802 cultural, 197 natural and 32 mixed properties, making a total of 1031 in 163 countries worldwide. Italy_WHS © A2studio copia.pdf
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With 51 sites, Italy is the country with the greatest number of properties on the list. Currently only four of these are listed as natural heritage sites: the Aeolian Islands, Monte San Giorgio, Mount Etna and the Dolomites, all the rest being cultural sites. In the whole of Alps there are only four natural heritage sites: the Jungfrau-Aletsch glacier, the Tectonic Arena Sardona, both of them in Switzerland, Monte San Giorgio, in Switzerland and Italy, and the Dolomites in Italy (Updated june 2016).
“The nine components of The Dolomites World Heritage property protect a series of highly distinctive mountain landscapes that are of exceptional natural beauty. Their dramatic vertical and pale colored peaks in a variety of distinctive sculptural forms is extraordinary in a global context. This property also contains an internationally important combination of earth science values. The quantity and concentration of highly varied limestone formations is extraordinary in a global context, whilst the superbly exposed geology provides an insight into the recovery of marine life in the Triassic period, after the greatest extinction event recorded in the history of life on Earth. The sublime, monumental and colorful landscapes of the Dolomites have also long attracted hosts of travellers and a history of scientific and artistic interpretations of its values.”
Natural properties must correspond to at least one of the four following criteria: – to contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance (criterion VII); – to be outstanding examples representing major stages of earth’s history (criterion VIII); – to be outstanding examples representing significant ongoing ecological and biological processes (criterion IX); – to contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity (criterion X).
(World Heritage Committee) The Dolomites UNESCO Foundation Tel. +39 0436 867395 +39 0436 870062 Fax: +39 0436 876556
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The Dolomites have been inscribed on the World Heritage List on the basis of natural criteria VII and VIII and recognized as “some of the most beautiful mountain landscapes anywhere”. M
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info@dolomitiunesco.info www.dolomitiunesco.info
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THE DOLOMITES UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE
n the eyes of the world the history of the Dolomites began with their “discovery” towards the end of the XVIIIth century, a vital period for the development of science and western culture. Two key dates can be connected to their scientific discovery. The first is 1789, the year in which Deodat de Dolomieu identified the peculiarities of the mineral which makes up these mountains, to be named “Dolomites” in his honour a few years later by Nicolas de Saussure (son of Horace Benedict), who analysed them in a laboratory. The second was in 1822, the year in which Leopold von Buch stayed for a long time in these mountains to study their “strange” stratigraphy, summoning his friend Alexander von Humboldt, considered to be the best scholar of his time. The relationship and reports of these eminent scientists were not only important for science since they were also prominent cultural figures in XIXth century Europe. Thanks to their “universal spirit”, they were the first to grasp the intrinsic beauty of the geological and geomorphological peculiarities of these mountains, as is evident from their writings. Before the romantic aesthetic took hold, so important for the definition of the concept of natural beauty in western culture, the peaks of the Dolomites were not minimally considered, although always visited by painters and cultural figures. Thus the aesthetic importance of the Dolomites began to be recognised with the dissemination of scientific discovery, but was further popularised a few years later with the first travel books. This passage is recorded by two important events. The first was in 1837, the publication date of the first guidebooks specifically aimed at travellers and explorers: Murray’s handbook, published in London by John Murray and “Reisehandbuch durch Tirol” by Beda Weber. In these travel manuals, the “dolomite mountains” are described as unequalled, attracting
THE DOLOMITES UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE
Natural Heritage Cultural Heritage