Changes in the status of authenticity in the analysis of the valuation of historical monuments

The article presents the conclusions of reflections on the change of the status of authenticity in the valuation of monuments between 1964 and 2024. At that time it was referred to as a component, value of a monument, criterion of evaluation of a heritage attribute, and in the guidelines of the General Conservator of Monuments it is called a determinant of value evaluation.The analysis made records the changes in the perception of authenticity in a monument: from the recognition of the substance of the original and the layering, to the consideration of authenticity in the categories of: matter, form and function, and spirit, emotion and tradition. The starting point is the conclusions of Prof. Friedrich Mielke's paper at the Second Congress in Venice in 1964; then the reflections of the Polish conservation community of the 1960s and 1970s in relation to the authenticity of the monument and works of art, attempts to clarify the meanings of conservation terminology in the context of the Venice Charter with reference to authenticity in the revalorisation activities of historic urban complexes are presented. The 1994 Nara document sanctioned the results of international discussions pointing to cultural differences in the approach to heritage assessment and protection and the different contexts of authenticity. The results of the reflections of the Polish community are included in the value systems for monuments, where authenticity is treated as a value or attribute evaluation criterion (Witwicki 2007; Krawczyk 2013a; Lewicki 2016; Szmygin, Fortuna-Marek & Andrzej Siwek 2017). In the last 20 years, authenticity and integrity on the basis of the UNESCO Operational Guidelines and further on in many documents and value systems have become a category for assessing value attributes - as a reliable source of information about value (Operational Guidelines 2005). The assessment is carried out by different stakeholder groups, but there is no developed method for identifying, hierarchy the categories of authenticity and assessing their rank. The correlation of authenticity with conservation terms defining activities that affect the authenticity of monuments in different ways remains an unresolved problem.