Cultural heritage ("national heritage" or just "heritage") is the legacy of physical artifacts (cultural property) and intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations. Cultural heritage includes tangible culture (such as buildings, monuments, landscapes, books, works of art, and artifacts), intangible culture (such as folklore, traditions, language, and knowledge), and natural heritage (including culturally significant landscapes, and biodiversity).
The deliberate act of keeping cultural heritage from the present for the future is known as Preservation (American English) or Conservation (British English), though these terms may have more specific or technical meaning in the same contexts in the other dialect.
Cultural heritage is unique and irreplaceable, which places the responsibility of preservation on the current generation. Smaller objects such as artworks and other cultural masterpieces are collected in museums and art galleries. Grass roots organizations and political groups, such as the international body UNESCO, have been successful at gaining the necessary support to preserve the heritage of many nations for the future.
Read more about Cultural Heritage: Impulse To Preserve, World Heritage Movement, National and Regional Heritage Movements, Issues in Cultural Heritage
Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or heritage:
“The sickly cultural pathos which the whole of France indulges in, that fetishism of the cultural heritage.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)