Property: Provins, Town of Medieval Fairs
Id. N°: 873 Rev
State Party: France
Criteria: C (ii) (iv)
The Committee inscribed Provins, Town of Medieval Fairs on the World Heritage List under criteria (ii) and (iv):
Criterion (ii): At the beginning of the 2nd millennium Provins was one of several towns in the territory of the Counts of Champagne that became the venues for great annual trading fairs linking northern Europe with the Mediterranean world.
Criterion (iv): Provins preserves to a high degree the architecture and urban layout that characterize these great medieval fair towns.
The Delegate of Greece recalled her intervention made at the twenty-fifth session of the Bureau in June 2001, underlining that nothing remained of the installations relating to the Trade Fair in the Medieval Town of Provins, while other cities preserved better examples.
Several delegates questioned the research carried out on medieval fair towns, and asked whether archaeological excavations had taken place at Provins. The Delegate of St Lucia requested the reasons for the change in the recommendation by ICOMOS from negative in 1996 to positive in 2001.