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the well-being of the prospective World Heritage site that
it is appropriately safeguarded from outside and within.
- Expansion of housing: T here is clearly a danger that,
despite planning controls, a growth of Magdalena could
easily lead – from a World Heritage point of view – to
undesirable development within existing ‘reticulation’ on
the town’s margins and in particular around the edges of
the Criação Velha. The presence of new housing south of
Madalena and west of Criação Velha is already potentially
serious. It requires effective controls to ensure that the
setting of the site, and in particular the views from it
towards the summit of Pico, are not degraded.
- Stimulation of tourism: Although tourism can bring
positive benefits, without lack of controls it can also be
highly damaging. It is not clear from the papers quite how
tourism will be harnessed to advantage and the less
attractive development pressures constrained.
Management:
The whole area of core and buffer zones is apparently very
well-managed.
A Management Plan has recently been prepared, following
the evaluation visit. Although this sets out tasks to be
undertaken over the next few years, and includes excellent
maps and plans of the nominated site and the field systems,
it is less helpful in setting out an overall vision of the
nominated site or in providing aims or strategies which
could guide future actions.
For instance, the plan outlines various interpretive
initiatives but does not provide for an overall interpretive
strategy. Nor does it indicate how the living village of
Lajido is to be sustained or the management of the
currently derelict areas approached.
It would also have been helpful for the plan to consider the
issue of future skills and resources needs to sustain the site.
Boundaries:
Considering the presence of such an extensive area of
reticulated stone-walling on the island, the two nominated
areas are very small.
On the western, marine side, the boundary of the Criação
Velha nominated area is obviously satisfactory, as it is on
the south and east. On the north side, the ‘reticulation’ has
been locally destroyed by a small zone of modern
development, partly hidden in woodland, but immediately
north again is a small, clearly-defined, walled estate
attached to the well-maintained family manor house called
Salema.
This association, between reticulated landscape and
proprietorial house of the early 19 th century, is lacking
from the rest of the nomination, yet it is fundamental to the
history and working of the system. Furthermore, this
particular ‘pocket estate’, contains a full suite of other
associated features – pathways, field shed, tide-well,
cistern, wine press and storage building, small lake and
planted, exotic trees, together with extraordinarily clear
and well-preserved detailing of the plots and their
relationships.
The case for including this estate within the nomination is
compelling on cultural grounds.
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The proposed buffer zone appears to be weak in two
places:
•= At Criação Velha, the village is spreading along
the north-south road and across the slopes west of, and
overlooking, the nominated area. This suburban
development can clearly be seen from the nominated area.
The western boundary of the buffer zone, currently east of
the road, should be pushed up the slopes east of the road in
order to control development impacting directly on the
view out from the site towards the natural eye-catcher, Pico
Mountain.
•= At Lajido, the south eastern point of the
nominated area and the boundary of the buffer zone are
virtually coterminous. It would be helpful from a World
Heritage point of view in managing land to extend the
boundary to the south east and up the slope as close as
possible to Santa Luzia, without actually including the
village.
Authenticity and integrity
Authenticity is about as high as can be expected of a
landscape that has developed over 500 years. To all intents
and purposes, the landscapes of the two core areas, and
much of the buffer zone, are intact, extraordinarily wellpreserved,
and without the addition of irrelevant or
untoward structures or other features. They remain
agricultural, specifically viticultural, unmodified and
almost entirely fixed in time in the 19 th century when the
windmills were added as the last significant accretion. The
main change since then has been field abandonment and
vegetational recolonisation. The major exception is the
airport near Santa Luzia; minor exceptions are a few
buildings in Lajido that are going to be removed.
The intention is to maintain this authenticity. No
mechanical methods of cultivation are allowed in core
zones, and farming is by individual owner farmers. Not all
the owners live in the immediate vicinity; some are
residents of the neighbouring island of Faial (as has
traditionally been the case). A realistic appreciation of
economic possibilities, respecting the need to maintain
authenticity in life-style as well as in the landscape
physically, needs to be based on wine marketing, with
appropriate ecotourism and craft promotion.
From a cultural perspective, the nominated property is in
no sense complete, in that it is merely a very small
fragment of a once far larger vineyard landscape extending
throughout much of the coastal area of the island. On the
other hand the fragment itself is of high quality and
internally intact. In Criação Velha about 90% of the
‘currais’ are in production; whereas in the core area of
Santa Luzia they are about 80-90% abandoned. The actual
structure of the ‘currais’, the lava walls, survives
everywhere almost undamaged (except where pulled to bits
to provide the building stone for the D-shaped structures
near Lajido).
Comparative evaluation
Much of the cultural detail about this nominated site is
particular to Pico, but it is in general not quite so unusual
in several respects as a field system or as an agricultural