This Handbook provides a cutting edge study of the fast developing field of international law on the protection of cultural heritage by taking stock of the recent developments and of the core concepts and current challenges. The legal protection of cultural heritage has come under renewed
focus from the international community and states since the 1990s. This is evidenced by the adoption of a range of international instruments. Countries are also enacting cultural heritage legislation or overhauling existing laws within their own national territory.

Contributions address the protection of immovable and movable, tangible and intangible cultural heritage in peacetime and in the event of armed conflict as well as the interaction between specific regimes of cultural heritage protection with other fields of international law, including international
criminal law, human rights and humanitarian law, environmental law, international trade, investments, and intellectual property. The last part of the Handbook covers diverse regional systems of heritage protection.

About the Author:
Francesco Francioni (Dr Juris Florence and LL.M Harvard) is Professor Emeritus of International Law at the European University Institute and Professor of International Cultural Heritage Law at LUISS University, Rome. He has published extensively in the field of international law and held the Chair
of International Law at the University of Siena from 1980 to 2003. He was a visiting professor at the University of Texas, Austin, from 1987 to 2008 and has taught as a visiting professor at the Universities of Cornell, Oxford, Munich, and Columbia, NY. He is a legal consultant for UNESCO and has
participated in the negotiation of the main treaties and protocols concerning the protection of cultural heritage of the past 25 years. In 1987 and 1988 he was President of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee.

Ana Filipa Vrdoljak is UNESCO Chair in International Law and Cultural Heritage and Professor of Law, University of Technology Sydney. She is a member of the Advisory Board, International Journal of Cultural Property (Cambridge University Press) and President of the International Cultural Property
Society (U.S.). She has been Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow, Marie Curie Fellow, and Jean Monnet Fellow, Law Department European University Institute, Florence, and taught as visiting professor at Renmin Law School, University of Parma and Central European University. She has served as a legal
consultant to intergovernmental organisations (including UNESCO, European Commission and UNHCHR) and national governments. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy (in Law), Bachelor of Law (Hons) and Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts (Hons)) from the University of Sydney.