Legal measures to protect historical city of Ayutthaya and cultural heritage management

Abstract

This article aims to study the concepts and theory of development, the essence of Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage A.D. 1972, the development of Ayutthaya Historical Park to be a World Heritage Site "Historic City of Ayutthaya", and law enforcement to protect Historic City of Ayutthaya. This is also to propose legal measures that are effective and consistent with the current social context of Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya province and support future trends.

From this study, it was found that the important legal system and mechanism for protecting and managing Historic City of Ayutthaya has not been established. This is because many relevant laws are involved to protect the city without integration as well as lack of legal unity. In addition, there are no legal measures to encourage people, communities and local administrative organizations for a concrete participation in cultural heritage protection. Therefore, solutions for the heritage protection for the city were proposed as follows: 1) the amendment to the Act on Ancient Monuments, Antiques, Objects of Art and National Museums, B.E. 2504 to allow the Ministry of Culture as the main agency for cultural heritage protection and the local government organization as the responsible agency for area cultural heritage under the supervision of the Fine Arts Department; 2) the increase in participation of people and local government organizations based on the mentioned Act, especially the ​​cultural heritage protection planning and the encouragement of cultural heritage knowledge and value among people in the community.