Abstract
There seems to be a connection between history, identity, nation and territory since the 19th century. In the contemporary sense of the umbrella term “cultural heritage”, we refer to prestigious works of the past – monuments and masterpieces – as well as folklore elements and landscapes. The importance of heritage in creating a sense of belonging is such that it now seems impossible to dissociate cultural heritage from our conceptions of the territory. In this article, we aim to show how cultural heritage, understood as a social, political, and economic construction process that anchors values around an entity – an object, a building, a place or even a practice – also implies the recognition of the very territory within which this entity evolves. Using the Vienna State Opera as an example, we shall analyse the stages of this process in order to understand its dynamics and the players involved, and in order to define what constitutes cultural heritage regarding both time and space. This case also allows us to observe the processes around heritage on several scales: the regional, national and international scale.