Cultural Landscapes: construction; perception and evaluation in the Late Middle Ages and today

Abstract

Cultural landscapes “represent the combined work of nature and man” (UNESCO). In the late Middle Ages, images of them could become a popular means to create or strengthen the identity of their beholders showing, for instance, views of one’s beautiful town, one’s successful mining community or one’s well governed territory. Today’s methods to create and preserve identity with the help of cultural landscapes and their representation are certainly in some aspects different from the late medieval methods, in other ones strikingly similar and clearly not in any way less important.