Luoyang Designates 'Protection Circles' for 263 Municipal-level Cultural Relics Protection Units

Recently, Luoyang announced the protection scope of 263 municipal-level cultural relics protection units. By implementing spatial management and control measures, the city aims to enhance effective supervision and ensure the dynamic inheritance of its cultural heritage.

The newly designated protection scope for municipal-level cultural relics protection units includes five categories, namely sites of ancient culture, ancient tombs, ancient architectural structures, cave temples and stone carvings, and important modern and contemporary historical sites and typical buildings. Among them, there are 103 ancient ruins, 52 ancient tombs, 82 ancient architectural structures, 10 cave temples and stone carvings, and 16 important modern and contemporary historical sites and typical buildings. According to the relevant provisions of the "Cultural Relics Protection Law" (文物保护法), other than cultural relics protection projects, no construction projects or operations such as blasting, drilling, and excavation shall be carried out without approval within the protection scope of these cultural relics protection units in the future.

"Designating the protection scope is not merely 'drawing a circle', but rather realizing the dynamic supervision and living inheritance of cultural heritage through spatial management and control, and preserving the non-renewable cultural space memory of history in the process of modernization." As the person in charge of the Luoyang Municipal Cultural Heritage Bureau introduced, Luoyang City relies on technologies such as Geographic Information System (GIS) and 3D scanning to establish digital archives of cultural relics, and conducts dynamic monitoring on the protection areas of cultural relics protection units. At the same time, the city incorporates the cultural relics protection plan into the "one map" of the territorial spatial planning, and conducts a pre-evaluation of the impact on cultural relics in the renovation of old urban areas and the development of new areas. Such measures ensure the effective connection between project construction and cultural relics protection.

(Source: Luoyang Daily)