In order to understand the specificity of the European model of cultural heritage policy, we shall first take account of the main changes in the late modern world which pre-determined the repositioning of culture and cultural heritage in the world economy; then we shall trace the reasons leading to the current reappraisal of cultural heritage in European public policies, and finally we shall reveal the main trends in the European policies for cultural heritage, which form a distinguishable, coherent long-term approach that presumably can be qualified as ‘the European model’.
