ABSTRACT
Authenticity has always been an essential qualifying criterion for the inclusion of sites on the World Heritage List. Nonetheless, it might arguably be considered as one of the most slippery concepts in heritage conservation. This is testified by the numerous debates on this concept and its changing definitions and guidelines adopted by the World Heritage Committee up until the 1990s. This is also reflected in the profuse academic research in the 1990s, triggered in particular by the 1994 Nara Conference on Authenticity. Since then, reflections on authenticity have faded away in the academic sphere and at the intergovernmental level of the World Heritage Committee. However, numerous fundamental questions related to this concept remain: How have States Parties understood the concept of authenticity, and explained and represented it in their nomination dossiers of sites submitted for inclusion on the World Heritage List? Can different definitions of authenticity be detected according to the geographical location of nominated sites? What happened from 1994 onward? Can changes be detected in the way in which States Parties defined authenticity? Did they integrate the Nara Document on Authenticity in their explanation and representation of authenticity in nomination dossiers? If so, how?
