Abstract

By examining charts and international agreements related to the conservation of monuments and of historic centres, over the last eight years, this paper explores the way in which authenticity, a central issue discussed from the first debates, has remained and has shifted. On the one hand, authenticity has been a central element to address the conservation of historic centres in the Latin American cities, while reveals an approach to urban trasnformations and new schemes in perspective of groups or areas rather than of individual buildings. On the other hand, the notion of authenticity has changed in relation to the transformations that the notion of heritage and of monuments has experienced. This articles considers that the understanding of authenticity and its new relation with urban renewal must be understood in terms of the recognition that in the last decades has been given to cultural diversity as a genuine attribute of heritage and in terms of the increasing role that the community has been having in the processes of listing buildings and areas. Thus, in this relationship the participation of the community, in the legitimation its heritage, has shaped a new dimension of authenticity.