Clive Ruggles

Portal to the Heritage of Astronomy

The web portal serving UNESCO’s Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative was launched in August 2012 at the International Astronomical Union’s 28th General Assembly in Beijing, China. The site, which resides at www.astronomicalheritage.net, is a dynamic, publicly accessible database, discussion forum and document repository on astronomical heritage sites throughout the world, even if they are not on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

The online portal was one of the first major deliverables from the accord set up between UNESCO and the International Astronomical Union in 2008, when the two organisations signed a formal Memorandum of Understanding to work together to advance UNESCO’s Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative. Another was the first ICOMOS–IAU Thematic Study on the Heritage Sites of Astronomy and Archaeoastronomy, which was published in 2010.

The portal contains:

• a range of general information pages; • thematic essays and case studies, searchable geographically and temporally using a specially developed “heritage finder” tool; and • a discussion forum permitting authorised users to discuss current entries, propose additions and changes, propose new heritage entities (case studies), and discuss general issues.

The portal not only features sites and monuments, but also other types of astronomical heritage such as portable instruments and intangible cultural practices, as well as dark-sky places.

The portal has been designed in such a way that both beginners and experts can benefit from its content. This is an important step in the process of raising awareness of the importance of protecting astronomical heritage sites at all levels. It is dynamic resource, continually subject to update by peer review.

Where case studies on the portal concern sites already on the World Heritage List, two-way links exist between the information on the portal and on the World Heritage Centre’s own website.

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