ECONOMICS UNIQUENESS

BOX 5.1
HERITAGE CONSERVATION AND PROPERTY VALUES ■ 111
Responsible Planning and Investments Restore the
Walled City of Baku’s World Heritage Listing
Azerbaijan Cultural Heritage Support Project (Project number 058969)
Total Project Cost: US$8.9 million
Total Loan Amount: US$7.5 million
Approved: May 1999 – Closed: June 2007
In 2003 Icheri Sheher, the Walled City of Baku, with the Shirvanshah Palace
and Maiden Tower, was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. However,
three years later UNESCO placed Icheri Sheher on the list of World Heritage in
Danger, citing damage from a November 2000 earthquake, poor conservation,
and dubious conservation efforts. The World Bank was already assisting the
Azerbaijan government in designing a program of investments to better conserve
several of the country’s key monuments and strengthen the capacity of
the agencies responsible for their protection. At that point, the Bank Project
was restructured to earmark investments to be used not only to conserve the
key landmark of the Walled city, namely the Shirvanshah Palace, but also to
prepare and implement detailed plans for the conservation, use, and management
of the entire Walled City. The conservation efforts and the preparation of
the plans (that included also a tourist plan and an operation and maintenance
plan) had an immediate impact on the number of visitors to the site, which had
increased by about 35 percent in 2007. In 2009, two years after project completion,
the World Heritage Committee praised Azerbaijan for its efforts to preserve
the Walled City and removed it from the endangered list.
Source: Azerbaijan Cultural Heritage Support Project Appraisal Document, and Implementation
and Completion Report.
lists, which are the responsibility of local governments—although anyone may
nominate a building for inclusion on the lists. Th e protection measures, including
statutory norms, safeguards, and laws for heritage buildings, are integrated into
the local planning system. Th e law states simply that to be listed, a building must
be of “special architectural or historic interest” (Cherry 2001).
In Italy and France, the national government (through the Ministry of Culture)
and regional, department, and municipal governments identify heritage buildings.
Th e protection policies, laws, and regulations for heritage buildings are on