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363 · Peru
Colca Canyon
A great canyon is also a cultivated and inhabited landscape, with terraces and villages adding depth to its natural drama.
The wonder encyclopaedia · Heritage
Cultural landscape
A landscape whose character and significance arise from the interaction of people and their environment.
Photograph
world-wide-gifts.com · CC BY-SA 2.0A way of understanding.
The idea of a cultural landscape helps explain why a vineyard, rice terrace, sacred mountain or designed garden can deserve attention as a whole. The interest is not confined to an isolated building or a supposedly untouched natural view. Work, belief, water, vegetation and settlement may all contribute.
For a visitor, this changes the scale of looking. Paths, field boundaries, irrigation and views between places can be as important as the headline monument. Some landscapes remain productive and lived in; others preserve evidence of earlier systems.
It also changes the question of care. Keeping a landscape meaningful may involve supporting practices and communities, not merely repairing its most photogenic structures. Do not assume that the absence of monumental buildings means the absence of cultural history.
A question to take with you
Which relationships would disappear if you removed the people, cultivation or everyday activity from the view?
Further explanation and context: whc.unesco.org. The examples below are editorial connections, not a claim that every place has an identical history or form.
See the idea in the world.
390 · Portugal
Douro Valley
Terraced slopes and a winding river show how generations of cultivation can transform a difficult landscape.
418 · South Africa
Mapungubwe
An archaeological hill and surrounding landscape reveal the history of a southern African kingdom and its trading connections.
420 · Cuba
Viñales Valley
Limestone hills and cultivated valley floors make a cultural landscape whose character depends on both geology and farming.
463 · Argentina
Quebrada de Humahuaca
A long-inhabited Andean corridor combines vividly coloured mountains with villages, routes and cultural continuity.
487 · China
West Lake, Hangzhou
Water, islands, gardens and distant hills form a cultural landscape shaped through centuries of artistic and poetic attention.