Việt Nam: Sectoral overview

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OVERVIEW:

Built heritage

Historical background

Sectoral overview

Current issues

Sectoral overview

There are estimated to be nearly 40,000 monuments and heritage sites around the country, of which just over 3,000 currently enjoy listed status. These include over 20 extant Chăm tower complexes, numerous ancient citadels, hundreds of temples and pagodas and an assortment of revolutionary vestiges, all of which are increasingly promoted as tourist attractions.

The National Cultural Heritage Department (formerly the Museums and Conservation Department) of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is assigned responsibility for managing the Presidential Palace Vestiges Area in Hà Nội and for providing professional guidance in the fields of conservation and site management at national level.

A four-year graduate training programme in conservation and museology was launched within the History Faculty of the Hà Nội National University during the 1970s; in the late 1980s this programme was transferred to a dedicated Faculty of Conservation and Museum Studies at the Hà Nội University of Culture (Trường Đại học Văn hóa Hà Nội).

In 2001 the government passed a new Cultural Heritage Law which seeks to provide a comprehensive new legal framework for the protection of the nation’s physical culture, traditions and historic artefacts. This important piece of legislation provides for the comprehensive inventorying of cultural and historic sites, identifying those that are endangered, restoring those that are in need of repair, and at the same time providing for more effective regulation of construction projects on on near such sites with a view to curbing unregulated modification of traditional architecture.

The Cultural Heritage Law also offers an overall legal framework for antique trading and provides for the recognition of citizens who donate works of art or uncover and declare cultural artefacts and relics.

Shortly after the promulgation of the Cultural Heritage Law, the Việt Nam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) revised its Master Plan for Tourism Development in Việt Nam until 2010 (1995) to reflect a focus on the conservation of the natural and cultural resources utilised by the tourist sector.

The National Cultural Heritage Department of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and some of the larger regional conservation offices are active in Asia Pacific regional and worldwide professional conservation activities, including programmes of UNESCO and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). Over the past decade too, technical assistance, scholarly exchange and training programmes have been set up with a large number of countries, including Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Japan.

Make direct contact with organisations and individuals working in the heritage sector through our KEY CONTACTS database.

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