Paper short abstract:

Cidade Velha is, since 2009, a World Heritage site whose importance as a center of development and application of politics regarding heritage and preservation goes back, despite the unawareness, to the beginning of the 20th century. Shouldn’t we learn something with the past and, mostly, disclose new values?

Paper long abstract:

According to the UNESCO's evaluation of Cidade Velha de Cabo Verde, the outstanding value of the place lies in three facts: the monuments testify the commercial importance of the city during the 16th and 17th centuries; the city was a major place of enslavement; due to this, it became a centre of multiculturalism.

Thus, after the 2009 UNESCO's classification, the city hall, Instituto de Investigação e do Património Culturais and the Proim-Tur have worked with those unquestionable values.

However, by being filled with the desire to catapult the Cidade Velha to the map of the world's most compelling places to visit, the management committee has systematically failed.

Thereby, with this paper we aim to demonstrate that, sometimes, we have to go backward before we move forward. Actually, the core of this paper lies in the fact that there are still some forgotten values that could contribute to the valorisation of Cidade Velha.

In fact, if we want to understand the present, past and future of Cidade Velha, we have to comprehend that one of the values of the place lies in the fact that, since the 20th century, as a Portuguese colony, Cidade Velha was the center of multiple heritage conservation/management experiences.

In conclusion, we aim to analyse the core problems of the management of Cidade Velha and, consequently, establish a comparison with multiple programs developed during the colonial times, in order to contribute to a brighter future to this world heritage site.