For a long time, monuments, groups of buildings and places with a historical, natural, aesthetic, archeological, scientific, ethnological and anthropological value have been considered as cultural heritage . This idea and concept of cultural heritage has been extended to other categories that are not strictly part of artistic fields, but that also have a great value for humanity. Among these fields we can find extraordinary physical, biological and geological formations, places with a exceptional value from the point of view of science, preservation or natural beauty, and the habitats of endangered animals and vegetals.
One of the values of this heritage is working as a link between people and their history, and helping them to know it, asume it and recognize it. For this reason, heritage is connected with the ideas of property and membership, because it reflects and serves as a proof for a moment of the history of this social cluster. However it emerges from this idea that can be considered as localist. At the same time, cultural heritage, and its diversity, works as a key concept for understading other people, as it incorporates the symbolic value of other cultural identities. It is a language that, once understood or just felt, is a tool for dialogue and interchange between different civilizations and cultures.
From this point of view, we have to understand the fact that cultural and monumental heritage is a tool for establishing and preserving peace between people and nations, and we have to consider it as a pole of economic development and wealth. Trying to move these concepts to the field of architecture, construction and the concept of preservation is a task that specialists admirers and lovers of heritage have been facing for centuries.
Preservation, conservation, restoration and highlighting of architectonic areas, historic places, as well as buildings such as churches, castles, palaces, monasteries and other monuments helps to maintain and strengthen the cultural wealth of a country. This task has also helped to transmit the heritage from one generation to another. Researchs on the processes, technologies and methods of intervention in the heritage influence in their own development and specialization. Public and private institutions, from every country, cannot turn their backs on their historical and artistic legacy, but they have to assume and strengthen it as part of their essence, and to acknowledge their character of common heritage.
On the other hand, it is fundamental to look at this as a cultural legacy, but also as an important economic resource that, well managed, increases the wealth of society and boosts a quality tourism. The result, not only cultural or artistic, but also economic and lucrative this investment/intervention for the recovery of heritage brings has not been studied and analyzed enough. However, it is obvious that this historical heritage of the countries is one of the biggest stimulus to strengthen cultural tourism.
Having clear these aspects and circumstances, the conservation of our heritage is essential. For this reason, we consider necessary to go a step further in the management of cultural heritage and to develop long-term programs of preventive conservation that, although they are a continued investment, minimize the need for restorating, which at the end are more expensive investments more aggressive for the work of art.
Nevertheless, the criteria of heritage intervention (movable or inmovable, tangible or intangible, public or private) have been and still are changing, and they depend on the place, the condition of the property, their material and construction techniques, etc.
During the last years there has been a new reflexion about heritage, especially the architectonic one. There have been a lot of constructions, what we inherited has been despised, and even demolished and deeply modified. Thanks to a more serious and thoughtful social and personal position, we should reach a new vision of heritage, and we should search and find new alternatives for its integration in our life style thanks to research and a better knowledge of this heritage.
