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C O N T E X T 1 5 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 8 27 A special Eurobarometer Survey on Cultural Heritage compiled on the eve of the 2018 European Heritage Year, comparing attitudes towards heritage across all 28 member states, reveals that relationships between length of membership and pro-European feelings are not straightforward. However, despite some varia- tion, ‘cultural heritage’ remains ‘considered a positive force in Europe: living close to cultural heritage can give people a sense of belonging to Europe, and can improve quality of life. Respondents think cultural heritage creates jobs, and that it engenders a sense of pride. This feeling of pride is not just related to cul- tural heritage in the respondent’s own country: although more than eight in 10 feel pride in an aspect of cultural heritage from their region or country, seven in 10 say they feel pride in some aspect of cultural heritage from another European country. The majority also agree culture, and cultural exchanges, are important to promote learning and a greater feeling of being European, as well as developing greater understanding and tolerance.’ More than eight in 10 (84 per cent) agreed that culture and cultural exchanges should have a very important place in the EU so that citizens could learn more from each other and feel more European. Almost as many (82 per cent) agreed that culture and cultural exchanges could play an important role in developing greater understanding and tolerance in the world. However, respondents were less likely to agree to these statements than they were in a survey about cultural understanding posing the same questions in 2007. The proportion that agrees now that culture and cultural exchanges can play an important role in developing greater understanding and tolerance in the world, even where there are conflicts or tensions, decreased by six per cent. There has also been a five-point decline in the proportion that agrees that culture and cultural exchanges should have a very important place in the EU so that citizens from different member states can learn more from each other and feel more European (European Commission, 2017). This decline in the belief in the possibility of understanding and tolerance through culture should give us pause. It not only reflects the current political crisis of Europe (and a more general turn away from the principles of inter- national dialogue) but also replicates a familiar pattern of crisis response during the last century. While there is no historic survey data that allows us to trace the development of opinions towards cultural heritage and European feeling in a sta- tistically sound way, and systematic long-term, post-project analyses of cross-border projects are woefully lacking, the history of conservation can give us a longitudinal perspective. My own work has traced the ebb and flow of internationalist aspirations for heritage since the French Revolution, demonstrating how the tension between nationalist and cosmopolitan visions informed the development of profes- sional networks, state institutions and individual historic conservation projects across Europe. I try to make visible the multitude of connec- tions – within and beyond Europe – that have shaped the processes of heritage making through the study of professional networks, popular movements, and particular sites. These refute isolationist visions of history or a narrative – to stay with the British example – of heritage mak- ing as solely a ‘battle for Britain’s past’. Connections across countries are equally important on a conceptual and institutional level as they are in shaping conservation as a profession. There would, for instance, be no concept of ‘national heritage’ in Britain without the heritage politics of the French Revolution. In turn the generation that created the conservation institutions that shape France to this day might not have been able to do this without their time in exile in Britain.When moving from the policy level to the conservation of individual sites, the picture is just as rich. Even in continental Europe, where the European history of architectural sites tends to be more emphasised than in Britain, few sites have a public history that extends the trans- national narrative to the buildings’ afterlife in conservation. Yet sites that play important roles in the founding narratives of national conserva- tion movements, such as Cologne Cathedral in The construction of Cologne Cathedral continued from 1248 to 1473. Work restarted on the unfinished building in the 19th century and was completed in 1880 (Photo: Aranas, Wikimedia Commons)