Abstract

The Co.Co.War Atlas is conceived as the first systematic compilation of identification (ID) sheets documenting cases of dissonant and contested heritage, structured both semantically and geographically, and compiled over the duration of the project (from late 2022 to early 2026). It establishes a tailored knowledge base focused on Dissonant Heritage (DH) and on strategies for managing it, serving as the foundation for the project’s activities. By nature, the Atlas collects information but does not merely constitute a descriptive or analytical exercise; rather, it gives concrete expression to an evidence-based methodology that complements the theoretical framework of Dissonant Heritage studies with an operational perspective. The Atlas is grounded in the assumption that heritage is unique and site-specific – shaped by social, political, cultural, environmental, ethnic, and religious dynamics – and closely intertwined with local communities and stakeholders. Accordingly, it does not assume that management approaches derived from real-world practice can be applied uniformly across contexts. Instead, it supports an understanding of the scale and scope of dissonance, raises awareness of heritage sensitivities, facilitates the analysis of ongoing and potential cultural processes, encourages value-oriented actions, and contributes to the development of a DH community and new collaborative networks. It is intended for Co.Co.War research units as well as for scholars, professionals, and practitioners working with built heritage and sites in contexts marked by active or latent conflict. The static format of the Atlas is augmented by the GeoApp, an interactive project tool developed in synergy with it. The GeoApp embeds the ID sheets as external links, geolocates cultural assets, and organises data into a dynamic, open-access knowledge infrastructure that can be updated over time, including by external users. The Atlas presented here is organized into two sections. The preliminary section outlines the rationale for the mapping (Why mapping?), describes the methodology and criteria underpinning the dataset (the Co.Co.War Matrix), presents the project outcomes (the GeoApp and the Atlas), highlights the potential for aggregated data extraction (Analytics), and introduces the standard ID sheet. The second section is dedicated to the collection of DH sheets, which currently number approximately 130.