The Charter invention. From Athens to Venice: the mythography of monument conservation

The 1931 Athens Conference on the conservation of monuments opened the long mythography of restoration charters. What were effectively the Conclusions of the Athens event, placed at the end of a volume La conservation des monuments d'art et d'histoire published two years later in a limited edition, were transformed into the first international charter for restoration. The transformation of this event into a founding mythology of restoration was helped by the International charter for the conservation and restoration of monuments and sites of 1964, which in its introduction (and taking up its legacy) definitively established this metamorphosis. It will in fact be after Venice that the so-called Athens Charter will gain both its critical fortune and its true international dimension, losing its origin over time.