Key Concepts of Museology - ICOM

HERITAGE
n. – Equivalent in French: patrimoine; Spanish:
patrimonio; German: Natur- und Kulturerbe;
Italian: patrimonio; Portuguese: patrimônio.
The notion of heritage (patrimonium)
in Roman law referred to all the
assets received by succession, assets
which, according to law, are inherited
by children from fathers and
mothers; family assets, as opposed
to assets acquired since marriage. By
analogy, two metaphorical uses were
born later. (1) Recently the expression
‘genetic heritage’ to describe the
here ditary features of a living being;
(2) ear lier the concept of ‘cultural
heritage’ seems to have appeared
in the 17 th century (Leibniz, 1690)
before being taken up again by
the French Revolution (Puthod de
Maisonrouge, 1790); Boissy d’Anglas,
1794). The term, however, has
many more or less broad meanings.
Because of its etymology, the term
and the notion that it infers have
spread more widely in Romance
languages since the 1930s (Desvallées,
1995) than in the Anglo-Saxon
world, which favoured the term property
(goods) before adopting the
term heritage in around the 1950s,
while differentiating it from legacy.
In the same way the Italian govern-
H
ment, while one of the fi rst to recognise
the term patrimonio, continued
to use the expression beni culturali
(cultural goods). The idea of heritage
is inevitably tied to that of potential
loss or disappearance – as was the
case after the French Revolution –
and at the same time to the will to
preserve these goods. “Heritage can
be recognised by the fact that its loss
means a sacrifi ce and that its conservation
also presupposes sacrifi ces”
(Babelon et Chastel, 1980).
1. Starting with the French Revolution
and throughout the 19 th century,
heritage essentially referred to
immovable property and was generally
confused with the idea of historical
monuments. A monument, in
the original sense of the word, is a
construction intended to perpetuate
the memory of somebody or some
thing. Aloÿs Riegl identifi ed three
categories of monuments: those
that were conceived intentionally
“to commemorate a specifi c time or
a complex event in the past” (intentional
monuments), “those chosen
by subjective preferences” (historical
monuments), and fi nally “all the
creations of mankind, independent
of their signifi cance or their original
intent” (ancient monuments)
(Riegl, 1903). According to the prin-
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