From Sacred Place to Monumental Space: Mobility Along the Way to St. James

Human intervention and social practices have been pivotal for the creation of sacred spaces; indeed, the mobility of human beings has endowed spaces with meaning through religious cultural products. Progressive human intervention in holy places has turned them into monumental spaces, where cultural heritage has become a symbol of identity and the space has assumed the values of the culture that produced it. In this paper, we investigate the value of heritage along pilgrimage routes, as in the case of the Way of St. James. The sacred-monumental space works according to the system of artistic and cultural elements that define it as an integrated system. We will focus on the twentieth-century rediscovery of the Way in Spain, on the processes of monumental reinterpretation that culminated in its declaration, in 1987, as ‘First European Cultural Route’ by the Council of Europe, and as ‘UNESCO World Heritage Site’, in 1993.