Examining two architectural assemblages of Islamic origin, the Alhambra of Grenada and the Chellah of Rabat, the author offers the concept of “living cultural heritageˮ as opposed to the contemporary trends that consider these places from an archeological or aesthetic point of view. An alternative to the ambiguous notion of “intangible heritage,ˮ widely circulated in the anthropological world, which tends to blur the analysis, this concept is related to the notion of “civilization and its discontentsˮ as proposed by Freud.