World Heritage Glossary: Definitions and Terms Explained

Authenticity - A cultural property nominated for inclusion in the World Heritage List [can] be considered for inclusion only if it meets one or more of the cultural heritage criteria and the test of authenticity.\n2. Buffer zone - An area surrounding the property which has restrictions placed on its use to give an added layer of protection; [such] area ... should be determined in each case through technical studies.\n3. Conservation - All efforts designed to understand cultural heritage, know its history and meaning, ensure its material safeguard and, as required, its presentation, restoration and enhancement.\n4. Cultural heritage - Includes monuments: architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, cave dwellings and combinations of features, which are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science; groups of buildings: groups of separate or connected buildings which, because of their architecture, their homogeneity or their place in the landscape, are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science; sites: works of man or the combined works of nature and man, and areas including archaeological sites which are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological point of view.\n5. Cultural landscapes - Properties which derive their outstanding universal value from a particularly significant combination of cultural and natural features.\n6. Groups of urban buildings - Include the towns which are no longer inhabited but which provide unchanged archaeological evidence of the past, historic towns which are still inhabited (inhabited historic towns) and new towns of the twentieth century.\n7. Inscription - Refers to the act of including or inscribing a property in the World Heritage List.\n8. International protection - The establishment of a system of international co-operation and assistance designed to support States Parties to the Convention in their efforts to conserve and identify that heritage.\n9. Joint nomination - Submission of nominations of a property or series of properties that extend across the national territorial borders of one State Party into the territory of another States Party.\n10. World Heritage in Danger - Properties appearing in the World Heritage List for the conservation of which major operations are necessary and for which assistance has been requested under the Convention.\n11. Mixed property - Represents the 'combined works of nature and of man' designated in Article 1 of the Convention. They are illustrative of the evolution of human society and settlement over time, under the influence of the physical constraints and/or opportunities presented by their natural environment and of successive social, economic and cultural forces, both external and internal.\n12. Operational Guidelines - Prepared by the World Heritage Committee for the purpose of informing States Parties to the Convention of the principles which guide the work of the World Heritage Committee in establishing the World Heritage List, the List of World Heritage in Danger and in granting international assistance under the World Heritage Fund.\n13. Spirit of the Convention - Refers to the special qualities of the Convention as an international heritage protection instrument reliant on collective international protection, the notion of outstanding universal value, and the conservation of both natural and cultural heritage in a single protective instrument.