What does the notion of authenticity mean in different countries? What role can be assigned to old military fortresses? Should monuments be restored? If so, what techniques and what materials should be used? Between interpreting, reinventing, freezing at a moment in time, identically rebuilding, etc., points of view and biases vary depending on national cultures, sensitivities and periods.
Through examples from around the world, from Lebanon to Algeria, by way of Greece, Japan and Korea, this conference examines this complex notion of authenticity, as applied to architectural heritage, fortifications and the study of castles.
Organised as part of the application by 'the City of Carcassone and its sentinel mountain castles' to be added to the UNESCO world heritage list, the event presents conservation models that have been used on other cultural assets. It offers a comparative study of the choices and practices brought into effect on exceptional heritage sites, in particular through the prism of international rules on authenticity.
The fortified town of Carcassonne and its offshoots, the castles overlooking the Black Mountain and Corbières foothills, form a superb heritage complex. The architecture rises as a spectacular vertical extension of the rock. This chain of fortresses is also an invitation to journey through history, to discover other fortification systems, through which sovereign powers sought to control, defend and monitor territories against enemies from within and without.
The 2021 Carcassonne colloquium aimed to bring together historians, architects and archaeologists from all over Europe to compare equivalent sovereign systems on the European continent in the 13th and 14th centuries. The present volume reflects the extraordinary breadth of these interactions. From daily life to living under siege, from stone cutting to the implementation of intricate building projects, from administration to project management, every facet of these fortified networks is evoked, in widely varied contexts. They showcase how much the Carcassonne ensemble is symbolic of a European, even global, movement of appropriation and spatial organisation by different societies.
