Thăng Long Imperial Citadel’s core recognized as world heritage
01/08/2010
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16:26:20
VGP – The World Heritage Committee has just ratified a resolution to recognize the center of the Thăng Long Imperial Citadel in Hà Nội, Việt Nam, as a world cultural heritage site.
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Watchtower atop the Southern Gate of the Thăng
Long Imperial Citadel |
The resolution was approved
at the Committee’s 34th session in Brasilia
(Brazil)
on July 31, 2010.
The site’s prominent values
include historical-cultural length; its continuity as a center of power, and abundant
layers of artifacts.
The Committee considered
the recognition of the Thăng Long Citadel on the basis of six UNESCO-stipulated
criteria.
Under
Criterion 2, artifacts on the ground and unearthed at the center of the Thăng
Long Imperial Citadel are original evidence for long-term cultural interchange.
Such acculturation was presented in landscape design, the planning of palaces, royal
architecture and decorative art in various consecutive stages.
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Stone dragons at the Kính Thiên Palace in the
center of the Thăng Long Imperial Citadel |
The site bears a unique or
at least exceptional testimony to a long-standing cultural tradition of the
Vietnamese people in the Red River Delta, which has been living for 13
consecutive centuries until now (Criterion 3).
As defined in Criterion 6, the
Thăng Long Imperial Citadel center is clearly directly associated with historical
events of the Vietnamese nation in Southeast Asia.
The site is an persuasive proof of the vitality and recovery of a nation after
ten centuries under the foreign domination.
By Xuân Hồng