Chronicle of a death foretold. Or when a National Monument fails its status.

Abstract

The main goal of every heritage application is to achieve a nomination status to safeguard a property and guarantee its protection so that future generations may inherit some important values that contributed to creating a collective identity.

However, that legacy depends on how and what should be protected, which implies a previous selection, which means a policy. To achieve this, any approach to classify a property should be based on a collective reflection about its significance. So, a patrimonial nomination is a juridical and legal status that attributes a value to a place as “heritage”. Nevertheless, that title may not be sufficient to guarantee the property’s most appropriate recognition, understanding or even appreciation of those who manage it, who use it.

The aim of this article is to analyse the quality of the declassification decision approved concerning S. Domingos Church in Coimbra. It had been a National Monument since 1910, with a part included within the limits of the property nominated World Heritage by UNESCO, on the 22^nd of June, 2013.

To achieve that purpose, this work intends to analyse the chronicles of the technical and the historical process by examining them in relation to some pertinent texts that have contributed to the evolution of the concepts and the best practices in the field of heritage, as well as the national and international legal norms and regulations in use.

It is not this paper’s intention to judge the decisions that were taken and justified technically and then accepted by those with the highest political responsibility. But it is this work’s intention to study this process so that heritage players may be better prepared to confront and deal with similar situations in the future. Heritage is a profitable resource that should be promoted and it is the community, in this case, the global one, that could lose the attributed value status by a long-predicted death.

In this sense, it is our understanding that the most responsible stakeholders, such as the community itself, should be more vigilant for the future, because its common responsibility to pass on a value that was important for the creation of their cultural identity in the past, that it is still important and should, presumably, be important tomorrow.