Part of Rio de Janeiro territories is recognized in 2012 as a cultural landscape on the Unesco World Heritage list. The results of an institutional ethnography allow us to seize the terms and conditions for the heritage dimension of a landscape to be mobilized in the institutions discourses. Thanks to the analysis of these statements it is then possible to sketch the outlines of the imagination of these heritage experts regarding the landscape figure. By paying attention to the variations of this "cultural landscape" from an institution to another on, and to the underlying balance of power, we offer to understand what are the multiple meanings of the heritage shaping on, with regard to a territory in transformation. Finally, this article propose to contribute to the reflections on the plasticity of the notion of heritage as a social construction circulating through various cultural areas.