Cultural Heritage is the Community. The restoration of the Picaleña railway station in Ibagué, Colombia

The impact that the global pandemic has had on our lives has allowed us to rethink and analyze important values of human existence, and fortunately the issues have also affected our cultural heritage, which until now has always been considered an external factor to man. Although many studies have developed important reflections on the close dialogue between man and heritage, only the pandemic has called into question this fundamental relationship, which now allows us to reflect on the importance of cultural heritage as a mirror of the human being. Starting from these principles already in 2009 in Colombia began a very important project for the restoration of the Picaleña railway station in the Tolima Department, Colombia. This project, completed in 2020, demonstrated how humanity's first cultural heritage is humanity itself, that is, the community that created it and to which it belongs. This “human heritage” is therefore the first value with which to dialogue when we start a restoration project.