Historic cultural towns & villages are the important part in the
conservation system of the heritage in China. These historic
towns & villages are the real recordation of the traditional culture, folk-custom and architectural art. However, with the rapid development of economy and rural urbanization, these towns and villages are short of a long-term and comprehensive planning and scientific effective conservation measures. As a result, these historic heritages and their surroundings are faced with a serious crisis and destroyed in a certain extent. The article reviews the conservation evolvement and the form of the conservation concept of the international and domestic historic towns & villages. The overseas conservation research is very early and thorough. The authors think historic cultural town & village is particular appellation in China and its characteristics are the value of history and culture. The authors point out the conservation of historic cultural towns & villages is different form that of famous cities because of their different characteristics such as the cultural landscape, background region, historic evolution, industrial structure, settlement form and size, so the former don't imitate the latter simply. According the international development the heritage conservation object has changed from the cultural relic and monocase
architecture into historic district, historic town and their surrounding. The paper puts forward the content of the conservation should include the vernacular architecture, cultural relic, street space, village shape, rural environment, country culture, neighborhood, country characteristic, aboriginal, behavior landscape and so on. The successful conservation of the historic towns and villages will keep up the natural and rural peculiarity, which is different from that of the big cities. As the conservation content relates to many aspects, the conservation activities such as protection, restoration, renovation, and revitalization require interdisciplinary participation and effort. From this point of the view, the authors propose that the method of the conservation of
historic cultural towns and villages should make use of history, geography, architecture, sociology, landscape ecology and so on.