TEHRAN, 7 July 2008 (UNIC) -- A ceremony to hand over the UNESCO World Heritage Certificate for Bam and its Cultural Landscape heritage property will take place in Bam city today. 

The Bam ceremony is the second of eight ceremonies to award certificates to the eight Iranian World Heritage properties. The other certificates will be given at ceremonies at Esfahan, Sultanieh, Takt-e-Suleiman, Chogha Zanbil, Persepolis and Pasargarde before December 2008. On 1 July, the UNESCO World Heritage Certificate for Bisotun cultural heritage property was handed over in Kermanshah.

Bam and its Cultural Landscape (including the world famous Arg-e Bam) was inscribed on the World Heritage List by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in 2004. The property was simultaneously inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger, considering the conservation challenges facing the property in the aftermath of the tragic December 2003 earthquake in the Bam region.

Bam’s World Heritage status is justified because Bam developed at the crossroads of important trade routes at the southern side of the Iranian high plateau, and it became an outstanding example of the interaction of the various influences; Bam and its cultural landscape represent an exceptional testimony to the development of a trading settlement in the desert environment of the Central Asian region; the city of Bam represents an outstanding example of a fortified settlement and citadel in the Central Asian region, based on the use of mud layer technique (chineh) combined with mud bricks (Khesht) and the cultural landscape of Bam is an outstanding representation of the interaction of man and nature in a desert environment, using the qanats.

The World Heritage Certificate is handed over to the government responsible for the protection and conservation of a successfully nominated World Heritage property, in this case the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As a property inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee annually examines the state of conservation report submitted by the Iranian Government.

Today’s ceremony will take place simultaneously with the handover of the Draft Comprehensive Management Plan of the property, elaborated by the national and provincial authorities with UNESCO support through the UNESCO-Japan Funds in Trust for World Cultural Heritage.  The property has received financial assistance from Japan and Italy through UNESCO.

Today’s event is being organized by the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicraft, and Tourism Organization, the Iranian National Commission for UNESCO, the Kerman Provincial Government, the Bam local municipal authority and UNESCO. The series of ceremonies being organized to give the World Heritage Certificates coincide with the 60th anniversary of Iran’s membership of UNESCO, as well as the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Iranian National Commission for UNESCO.