The Charters of Athens of 1931 and 1933: Coincidence, controversy and convergence

Abstract

Chance circumstances link two documents which bear the same name, the ‘Charter of Athens’- the restoration charter, the result of the International Conference for the Protection and Conservation of Artistic and Historical Monuments (1931), and the urbanism charter, issued after the IVth International Congress of Modern Architecture (1933). Their contrasting ideologies had a common denominator: the historic heritage of cities. Moreover, both affirmed the same desire to internationalize the debate on the universality of preservation values and the problems of cities in crisis. In order to clarify the confusion caused by the two Charters, this paper traces the circumstances of their origin. While examining their significant aspects – the values, principles and methods expressed – it also aims to show, via a parallel reading of the two texts, how innovative and original the ideas advanced were. The paper also tries to demonstrate the importance of this symbolic conjunction, which can be viewed as a key moment in conservation-urbanism dialectics that foreshadowed the new direction of theoretical work in urban heritage conservation.