Heritage could be described as the places and objects that we would like to preserve. These cultural places and objects are valued because they are descended from our ancestors, are beautiful, have scientific importance, and are irreplaceable examples and sources of life and inspiration. Heritage sets our standards. It forms our frames of reference and our identity and only exists because the effort has been made to preserve it by restorers.
Types of Heritage
Our heritage is simplified into three types;
1. Cultural Heritage
Cultural heritage is a collective name for monuments and collections with great cultural-historical significance. These traces of the past are visible and tangible.
Cultural heritage can be objects in museums, landscapes, monuments, archives, or archaeological findings. These are therefore the material heritage. But the associated customs, habits, and stories are also cultural heritage. These are intangible cultural heritage.
Within the material heritage, a distinction is made between immovable and movable heritage. Immovable heritage island-bound. These are, for example, landscapes, bridges, church buildings, monumental farms, and architectural heritage, sometimes kept in open-air museums, associations, or local communities.
2. Intangible Heritage
Intangible heritage includes dialects, songs, feasts, recipes, traditions, parades, and processions. The culinary heritage, i.e. the traditions regarding food and drink, is also part of this. An example of this is the preparation of regional cheeses and beers. Cultural heritage is considered important because it gives current generations a picture of the past. Heritage can also contribute to cultural identity.
3. Natural Heritage
Natural Heritage includes the countryside, biodiversity, geological and natural features that we got as our landscape. These natural resources provide habitat to species of animals and plants and hold great importance in science, conservation, and natural beauty.
Thus, cultural heritage is a collective term for everything created by previous generations and what still exists today and has great value to the community.
Protection of Cultural Heritage
Restorers with a set of interdisciplinary operations aim to prevent the deterioration of tangible cultural heritage and guarantee its safeguarding in order to transmit them to future generations with all the richness of their authenticity. Conservation is integrated with preventive, curative, and restorative actions.
In the same direction, conservation is also understood as making the heritage safe through targeted control of actions. It further includes monitoring and adaptation of the premises and environments dedicated to the preservation, display, and use of the different types of cultural heritage.
Importance of restorers in conservation
Our cultural and natural heritage is fragile. It has been threatened many times over the past hundred years. It is also at risk from increasing urbanization, poverty, natural disasters, and environmental pollution. The increasing mass tourism is also a threat to many monuments. One of the greatest dangers to the survival of our heritage is neglect, which unfortunately happens all over the world.
In response to the threats to our heritage in the past years, restorers began protecting our heritage. They get qualified to provide their irreplaceable services around the world to commit to heritage conservation.
The restorer examines restores objects and thereby physically intervenes in the object to be restored in order to preserve the cultural heritage. They combine (scientific) insight with technical skills and find practical solutions to complex issues while respecting restoration ethics.
