” Any attempt to inventory Toledo’s patrimonial wealth would be an unjustifiable and impossible bet to cover. If that argument were raised again today, the answer would be similar. In these twenty years, Toledo’s heritage has been enriched and recovered as never before in our history. Today those who visit Toledo can enjoy our monuments like no one else did fifty or a hundred years ago”.
In these lines that the Mayor of Toledo, José Manuel Molina, has written commemorating the declaration of Toledo as a World Heritage City by UNESCO, the spirit of the meaning of the city as a Monument is summarized. Toledo itself is a monument, a “city-museum”, impossible to catalogue as such and incalculable in its value. Leaving aside sterile political disputes, there is no doubt that we all consider Toledo to be something unique worthy of preservation over time.
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As reported by the City Council on its Official Website:
The City Council of Toledo will host this Thursday the commemorative acts of the twentieth anniversary of the declaration by UNESCO of Toledo as a World Heritage City. On the occasion of this anniversary, an Assembly of the Group of World Heritage Cities of Spain, of which Toledo was a founding member, will be held in Toledo. Likewise, at 12 o’clock in the morning in the Chapter Hall, an official act will take place in which Joaquín Sánchez Garrido, who was the Mayor of Toledo in 1986, and the current Mayor, José Manuel Molina García, will take part.
The declaration of Toledo as a World Heritage City was approved during the UNESCO General Assembly held in Paris from 26 to 29 November 1986. This declaration was argued in an ICOMOS report according to certain criteria, in which the succession of monuments and vestiges of the different cultures and civilizations in Spain were valued, and Roman to Baroque art was desired, stressing that “the city of Toledo as a whole represents a unique artistic creation and an uninterrupted chain of remarkable achievements”. In the course of that Assembly, next to the city of Toledo another thirty places were recognized, among them the old city of Cáceres, the Mudejar towers of Teruel and the National Park of Garanojay in La Gomera.
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To commemorate this twentieth anniversary, Toledo City Council is hosting an Assembly of the Group of World Heritage Cities of Spain, of which Toledo was a founding member in 1993. It currently includes the cities of Alcalá de Henares, Ávila, Cáceres, Córdoba, Cuenca, Ibiza, Mérida, Salamanca, San Cristobal de la Laguna, Santiago de Compostela, Segovia, Tarragona and Toledo. This Assembly will be attended by the current President of the Group, the Mayor of Córdoba, Rosa Aguilar Rivero, as well as the Mayor of Cuenca, José Manuel Martínez Cenzano, and the Mayor of Mérida, Pedro Acedo Penco.
After the celebration of this Assembly, the Chapter Hall will host a public act in which the UNESCO Declaration will be read, and Joaquín Sánchez Garrido, who in 1986 presented from the Mayor’s Office the file to request the declaration, and José Manuel Molina García will take part. The events will conclude with the unveiling of a commemorative plaque in the Reception Patio of the Town Halls, donated by the Group of Heritage Cities to Toledo on the occasion of this event.
More information:
– Town Hall Press.
– World Heritage Cities.
