Regulatory and legal status of landscape sacred places: natural monument or place of interest?

The article examines one of the basic categories of cultural landscape religious/revered places (landscape sacred places), which is used in modern research to designate sacred stones, springs, trees, stone or wooden crosses, and other landscape objects of natural or artificial origin endowed with sacred status. Traditionally, landscape sacred places were discussed as functional zones of cultural landscapes and places ofpopular historical memory (Cultural Landscape Studies and Memory Studies). Another recent aspect of studying landscape sacred places is associated with analysis of their status as places of interest and/or objects of natural and cultural heritage (Heritage Studies). The article pays particular attention to the history of comprehension and conceptualization of the concept of a place of interest (including the concepts formulated by a number of international Conventions initiated by the UNESCO). Regulatory and legal status of this category is currently determined by the Federal Law “On the objects of cultural heritage (historical and cultural monuments) of the peoples of the Russian Federation” (2002). Russian heritage management practices manifest relatively low involvement of local population in the processes of conservation, regulation, and planning of landscape as a whole and its individual components, as evidenced by regulatory documents and field evidence. For this reason, assessing the status of the landscape holy places is usually limited to stating the value of the sites as objects of natural heritage without taking into account their historical, cultural and religious value.