Annual Conference with Focus on the Interaction of Tourism and the Preservation of Monuments in World Heritage Sites.
170 experts from Germany and some from the neighbouring states heard lectures to the topics tourism & preservation of monuments. In two working groups expectations of the tourism experts to the persons in charge of building preservation should be formulated and vice versa on the second day of the conference. The presence of the mayor of Cologne and the North-Rhine/Westphalia Prime Minister Peer Steinbrück moved the World Heritage of the Cologne cathedral and his inglorious entry into the list of the threatened world heritage sites into the foreground. Point at issue is the establishment of multistoried buildings on the opposite Rhine
side of the impressing cathedral. One may be strained, to which results a particularly used working group of the city will come. The UNESCO expects for its part exspect a substantial obligingness of the city. In lectures Best Practice Examples from Germany, Austria and Switzerland were then presented. The transferability of the selected models is not always given. In one of the lectures e.g. the castle of Schoenbrunn in Vienna, which is organized for some years in the form of a GmbH, was presented. Very high toutistic traffic and a large basic stock of invested capital provides here even a profit yielding enterprise, whereby the surplus is back-demanded increasingly by the public hand. To judge critically are the following questions:
- Can the protection of the world heritage site also be sufficiently ensured in an private economically oriented organization form?
- How can under these circumstances the demand of the UNESCO for unrestricted accesibility be fulfilled?
- To what extent is the example transferable? e.g. on world heritance cities, where large areas are protected and where much more complex (administration -, use -, etc.) structures er applying?
Good examples of the co-operation of tourism experts and the persons in charge of the preservation of munuments were presented by representatives of the city of Bern in Switzerland. Unfortunately a report of the project garden dreams (Gartenträume) in Sachsen-Anhalt was missing. http://www.gartentraeume-sachsen-anhalt.de/ There the co-operation is working well. The lectures will be published on the Website of the Unesco Welterbestaetten e.V.http://www.unesco-welterbe.de.
