Rodos World Heritage Center

Ly Minaidi (left), president of the symposium’s organizing committee, sits next to George Giannopoulos, mayor of Rodos City. Both have worked hard to make the symposium a unique one for the Organization of World Heritage Cities.

The 7th International Symposium of the Organization of World Heritage Cities, which takes place as we go to press, opened on the island of Rodos on September 23 and continues on till the 26th at the Marika Capsis 2000 Confrerence Center within the Sofitel Capsis Hotel complex.

The symposium, under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Culture and the Cultural Olympaid, is being organized in cooperation with UNESCO and ICCROM. It will give participants – mayors and representatives of World Heritage Cities, scientists and experts – the opportunity to exchange ideas and to search out and develop issues under the general theme of “Keeping Heritage Alive: Education and Training for the Preservation and Management of Cultural Heritage.” Its main objective is to create opportunities to facilitate joint actions among the World Heritage Cities.

The general theme will be further developed in three thematic sessions and includes:

Informed communities as a prerequisite of strategic policies for understanding and disseminating cultural heritage values; Assessing and deciding for preservation and management; Education and training for the protection of cultural heritage; and Historic Cities as open labs of research and post graduate education.

The main purpose of the symposium is to develop further cooperation among the World Heritage Cities on the key issues of education and training, so as to facilitate joint actions.

The symposium has been organized in three parallel sessions. The first is The Mayors & Decision-Makers Forum. This forum is organized by ICCROM, which has retained a consultant for the organization of the forum. The participants will be the mayors and their key advisors and it will be structured in an interactive manner.

The forum will address the theme “Informed communities as a prerequisite of strategic policies for understanding and disseminating cultural heritage values. Assessing and deciding for preservation and management.”

The second is the Youth Forum, which is organized by UNESCO’s World Heritage Education Project. This forum will be attended by young persons, between the ages of 16 and19, selected from the World Heritage Cities.

This forum is supported by the Marc de Montalembert Foundation, which offers its renovated facilities, located in the Medieval Town of Rodos, for the meetings of the forum.

The third is the Scientific Congress, which is organized by the Scientific Committee that’s composed of the Ephors of Antiquities and experts who are involved with the preservation of the Medieval City of Rodos, as well as many distinguished scholars from all over the world.

Many are the monuments in Rodos, which are evidence of its rich and varied past complete with traces of the many different civilizations that left their imprint on the island throughout history.

The most important of them is the Medieval Town.