Sítio Roberto Burle Marx is included in the World Heritage List
It is the 23rd world heritage site in Brazil. Sítio is a laboratory of botanical and landscape experiments that synthesizes the work of Burle Marx.
Brazil has another site added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. Sítio Roberto Burle Marx (SRBM) is the legacy of the Brazilian landscaper who created the concept of the modern tropical garden. It was unanimously recognized on 27 August 2021, during the worldwide webcast of the 44th Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee held in Fuzhou, China.
With this new inscription, Brazil now has 23 properties inscribed on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List. These properties are considered as places of outstanding universal value for the culture of humanity. In addition, SRBM was recognized in the Cultural Landscape category, which includes properties that refer to an interaction between the natural environment and human activities, resulting in a modified natural landscape. The selection criteria were:
(ii) “it exhibits an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design”; and
(iv) “it is an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape that illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history.”
Located in Barra de Guaratiba, West Zone of Rio de Janeiro (RJ), the Site is a special unit of the National Artistic and Historical Heritage Institute (IPHAN), a federal institution linked to the Special Secretariat of Culture and the Ministry of Tourism in Brazil. With this inscription to the List, an international commitment is also created for preserving the place. One of the following steps will be formalizing the management plan for safeguarding the Site and its surroundings, involving various governmental institutions and civil society actors. This plan will map the risks and define the actions to minimize potential threats to the exceptional universal value of SRBM.