A Heritage Look of World’s Smallest Country Vatican City

The Vatican City, one of the most sacred places in Christendom, attests to a great history and a formidable spiritual venture. A unique collection of artistic and architectural masterpieces lie within the boundaries of this small state. At its centre is St Peter's Basilica, with its double colonnade and a circular piazza in front and bordered by palaces and gardens. The basilica, erected over the tomb of St Peter the Apostle, is the largest religious building in the world, the fruit of the combined genius of Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Bernini and Maderna.

Continent: Europe

Country: Holy See

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (I) (II)(IV) (VI)

Date of Inscription: 1984

The Tomb of Saint Peter and a Pilgrimage Centre

As the site of the tomb of Saint Peter and a pilgrimage centre, the Vatican is directly and materially linked with the history of Christianity. Furthermore, it is both an ideal and an exemplary creation of the Renaissance and of Baroque art. It exerted an underlying influence on the development of art from the 16th century.

The independent state defined by the Lateran Treaty of 11 February 1929 extends its territorial sovereignty over an integral area of less than 50ha: the Vatican City. However, this tiny enclave of Rome has, within the heritage of mankind, an importance which is inversely proportional to its derisory area. Centre of Christianity since Constantine (4th century), first the occasional, and then the permanent seat of papal power, the Vatican is at once an important archaeological site of the Roman world, the pre-eminently holy city of the Catholics and one of the major cultural reference points of both Christians and non-Christians.

Saint Peter's Square

Browse Gallery Plus UNESCO Storyline

Its prestigious past explains the development of an architectural and artistic ensemble, of exceptional value. The churches and palaces rest on a substratum impregnated with history. Beneath the basilica of Saint Peter, reconstructed in the 16th century under the guidance of the most brilliant architects of the Renaissance, remains of the first basilica founded by Constantine still exist, as well as fragments of the circus of Caligula and Nero, and an entire Roman necropolis of the 1st century AD, where Christian sepulchres are placed side-by-side with pagans. Saint Peter's was founded as a longitudinal basilica with five aisles, with a transept, apse, and large atrium with quadriporticus.

Slideshow for this Heritage Site

The edifice was erected in 315 over a tomb of Saint Peter. The apse area was subjected to a lengthy renovation which, entrusted by Pope Nicholas V in 1452 to Bernardo Rossellino, over the course of the following two centuries led a total revamping of the basilica's structural appearance. Julius II inaugurated a massive artistic project for the refoundation of the entire basilica, along with the decoration of the Stanze Vaticane and the Sistine Chapel and the construction of his own tomb. In 1606, finally, Carlo Maderno built the monumental facade and in 1626 the church was consecrated. Lorenzo Bernini was entrusted in 1656 for the renovation of the area in front of the basilica. He built two enormous hemicycles with Doric porticoes linked to the church through a trapezoidal plaza that frames the facade between two inclined perspectival backdrops. It represents the Church's embrace of all Christianity.

The Vatican Palace, built on a residence of Pope Symmachus (498-514), renewed during the Carolingian period and in the 12th century, is the result of a long series of construction campaigns in which, from the middle Ages successive popes rivalled each other in their munificence. The building of Nicholas III (1272-80) was enlarged principally by Nicholas V (1447-55), Sixtus IV (1471-84) preceding the major works of Innocent VIII, Julius II and Leo X (Belvedere and Belvedere Court, San Damaso Court and Loggia of Raphael).

The history of Renaissance art and of the Baroque period merges freely with the later additions to the palace, from Paul III (1534-49) to Alexander VII (1665-67). The works of the 18th century (the foundation of the Pio-Clementino Musem by Pius VI), of the 19th century (the Antiquities Museum of Pius VII and Gregory XVI) and of the 20th century (the new Picture Gallery) fit within the tradition of papal patronage.

Browse All UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Holy See. The original UNESCO inscription Here!!!

Old Village of Holloko and its Surroundings Hungary

Hollokö is an exceptional example of a deliberately preserved traditional human settlement representative of a culture that has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change. This village, which developed mainly during the 17th and 18th centuries, is a living example of rural life before the agricultural revolution of the 20th century. Located about 100 km north-east of Budapest, Hollokö is a small rural community whose 126 houses and farm buildings, strip-field farming, orchards, vineyards, meadows and woods cover 141 ha. The village and the surrounding area are given the same protection as a historic monument such as the castle. Mentioned as early as 1310, this castle, whose ruins lie to the north-west of the village today, played a decisive part in the feudal wars of the Palocz and the Hussite wars. It served as protection for the village whose ruins have been found a little way from its walls.

Continent: Europe

Country: Hungary

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (V)

Date of Inscription: 1987

Ottoman occupation

At the end of the Ottoman occupation (1683) the castle and the village were finally abandoned and the present village grew up below. It developed gradually throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. As was customary in the region, the first generation of inhabitants settled on either side of the main street. In this one-street village, subsequent generations built their houses at the back of the narrow family plots, thus progressively enlarging the built-up area. The barns were built apart from the village, on the edges of the fields, according to Palocz custom.

The development of the village and the soil can be traced from various documents. In 1782 it was still a typical one-street village. Later, a second street developed to the east of the main street. A plan of 1885 shows the topography was already like that of the present-day plan: the amount of cultivated land had reached its maximum by the mid-19th century and the village could therefore grow no further. Some limited growth started again in 1960 and is now strictly controlled.

Old Village of Holloko and its Surroundings Hungary

Browse Gallery Plus UNESCO Storyline

The inhabitants of Hollokö never heeded a 1783 decree prohibiting the use of wood for building, which considered it to be too inflammable. Consequently the village was periodically devastated by fire. The last of these fires dates back to 1909 but the houses were again built according to the traditional techniques of Palocz rural architecture: half-timbered houses on a stone base with roughcast white-washed walls, enhanced by high wooden pillared galleries and balconies on the street side protected by overhanging porch roofs. The church with its shingled tower is simply a transposition of this domestic architectural style.

Slideshow for this Heritage Site

Hollokö is a living community whose conservation not only includes farming activity but also ensures its success. It provides a certainly exceptional and maybe unique example of voluntary conservation of a traditional village with its soil. The plots that were modified by the regrouping of land were returned to their original strip shape. The vineyards, orchards and vegetable gardens have been recreated; the ecological balance has been restored, even in the forestry environment, taking infinite care to respect historical authenticity. Hollokö not only represents the Palocz subgroup within the Magyar entity, but also bears witness, for the whole of Central Europe, to the traditional forms of rural life, which were generally abolished by the agricultural revolution in the 20th century.

Browse All UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Hungary. The original UNESCO inscription Here!!!

Early Christian Necropolis of Pecs Hungary

The part of modern Hungary west of the Danube, which was first settled in the Neolithic period, came into the Roman Empire in the 1st century CE. It formed part of the Roman province of Pannonia. The town of Sopianae was founded on the southern slope of the Mecsek massif in the 2nd century by colonists coming from western Pannonia and Italy, who intermarried with the indigenous Illyrian-Celtic peoples. It became the headquarters of the civil governor (praeses) of the new province of Valeria at the end of the 3rd century. Sopianae was especially prosperous in the 4th century because of its situation at the junction of several important trading and military routes. Archaeological excavations have revealed a number of new public buildings in the forum area from this time.

Continent: Europe

Country: Hungary

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (III)(IV)

Date of Inscription: 2000

Christian Necropolis Christian burials

The town was also probably made the seat of an archbishopric around this time. There was a cemetery to the north of the town, with many Christian burials from the 4th century; in the post-Roman period, up to the 8th century, the imposing tombs probably served as shelters for different incoming groups of Huns, Germans, and Avars. It was not until the 9th century that Christianity was re-established in the town.

St Istvan (King Stephen I), founder of the Hungarian state, established one of his ten bishoprics there in 1009, no doubt influenced by the monumental Christian sepulchral buildings; the Cella Trichora was restored to its original use as a chapel. The fortified episcopal complex was to be expanded and reconstructed in the succeeding centuries, and it was within this enceinte that the Angevin King Laszlo I the Great established the first university in Hungary (1367). The medieval town grew outside the walls of the episcopal castle complex, and it was in turn fortified in the 15th century as protection against the growing Turkish threat.

Early Christian Necropolis of Pecs Hungary

Browse Gallery Plus UNESCO Storyline

Despite the heroic struggles of successive Hungarian monarchs over more than a century, the whole of the central part of the country was taken by the Ottomans in the mid-16th century. The episcopal castle of Pécs became the administrative centre of a sandjak. Most of the Hungarian inhabitants of the town fled, to be replaced by Moslems from Turkey or the Balkans, who demolished the churches and monasteries (with the exception of the cathedral) and used their stones for the construction of mosques and other Islamic buildings. The town walls were strengthened with bastions.

Slideshow for this Heritage Site

Pecs was freed from Ottoman rule in 1686, becoming part of the Habsburg lands. The bishopric was re-established and the town was repopulated with Hungarians and German colonists. The mosques and other Moslem buildings were converted for Christian purposes, although the baths (hammams) continued in use for a considerable time. The fortifications around the castle were demolished and the town began to take on a Baroque appearance. It was designated the administrative centre of a county and fine public buildings were added.

Pecs secured its independence from episcopal rule in 1780. During the 19th century it witnessed a spectacular development as a commercial centre, and was graced with many buildings in the architectural styles of the period - classical, romantic, historicizing, and eventually Art Nouveau. Fortunately, it was spared from inappropriate insertions during the second half of the 20th century.

Browse All UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Hungary. The original UNESCO inscription Here!!!

Monastic Island of Reichenau Germany

The remains of the Reichenau foundation bear outstanding witness to the religious and cultural role of a great Benedictine monastery in the early middle Ages. The Monastery of Reichenau was a highly significant artistic centre of great significance to the history of art in Europe in the 10th and 11th centuries, as is superbly illustrated by its monumental wall paintings and its illuminations. The churches retain remarkable elements of several stages of construction and thus offer outstanding examples of monastic architecture in Central Europe from the 9th to the 11th centuries.

Continent: Europe

Country: Germany

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (III)(IV) (VI)

Date of Inscription: 2000

The History of the Island of Reichenau

For over 1,000 years the history of the island of Reichenau, which lies in the northern reaches of Lake Constance, was closely intertwined with that of the monastery. The first Abbot, Pirmin, was given the task of building a monastery in honour of the Virgin Mary and Saints Peter and Paul. He oversaw the building of the first abbey, a wooden building, at Mittelzell on the northern shore of the island, as well as a three-winged cloister against the north side of the church. The whole building was gradually rebuilt in stone by 746. The monastery received generous endowments of land, and the island, an integral part of the abbey lands, was given over to agriculture. The monastery became a famous centre for teaching and creativity in literature, science, and the arts. The church was consecrated in 1048, in the presence of Emperor Henry III.

At the western end of the island of Reichenau, Egino, a former Bishop of Verona, built the first church of St Peter at Niederzell, consecrated in 799. The church was twice rebuilt and slightly altered in the 9th-10th centuries. The monastery buildings lay to the north, near the lake. In the late 11th and early 12th centuries the church was rebuilt and its two east towers were completed in the 15th century. Now dedicated to St Peter and St Paul, it became a parish church and was decorated in Rococo style in the 18th century. Abbot Heito III built the church of St George at Oberzell in the eastern part of the island in honour of the relic of the saint's head, which he brought back from a voyage to Rome in 896, the year of the church's consecration

Monastic Island of Reichenau Germany

Browse Gallery Plus UNESCO Storyline

The former abbey of St Mary at Mittelzell features three aisles and opposed transepts. It retains its rectangular west tower, flanked by narrow porches and the broad west transept dating from the mid-11th century. Beneath this high tower lies the apse, in front of which stands the altar. The 12th-century nave with its wooden roof opens out into the east transept whose crossing is defined by four identical broad arches and the liturgical choir of the church dedicated in 816, the oldest parts of the church. The Flamboyant Gothic choir is flanked by a sacristy and treasury. The monastery built in the 17th century on the southern side of the church now houses the town hall and the presbytery.

The church of St Peter and St Paul at Niederzell is a Romanesque structure of three aisles culminating at the eastern end in three hemispherical apses concealed within a central block and flanked by two impressive bell towers. The central apse retains fine wall paintings from 1104-34 laid out in three rows. A figure of Christ in Majesty in a mandorla is surrounded by symbols of the Evangelists, the patron saints of the church, and cherubim. Above stands a row of Apostles and another of the Prophets. Other fragments of 12th-century wall paintings survive, particularly in the north chapel where they represent the Passion Cycle.

In the church of St George at Oberzell a two-storey porch and a western apse dating from the early Romanesque period lead into the Carolingian church consisting of three aisles and a west choir of complex structure topped by a tower. The walls of the nave are decorated with remarkable early medieval wall paintings depicting the miracles of Christ. Each of the scenes is framed by decorative bands while painted busts feature between the arches of the arcade and figures of the Apostles between the windows. The chapel of St Michael on the first floor of the porch is also decorated with wall paintings depicting the Last Supper.

Slideshow for this Heritage Site

Browse All UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Germany. The original UNESCO inscription Here!!!

World Heritage Budapest Hungary

At the end of the 17th century a wall surrounded the city of Pest and for the most part Germans lived along the banks of the Danube. The areas outside of the city were arable land with fruit orchards, but by 1699 craftsmen had begun to establish suburban communities. From 1730 they began to settle an area then called Pacsirtamezq. In 1777 it was renamed Terezvaros after Saint Theresa and in honour of Maria Theresa. The parish church of Terezvaros was built in 1801-09 and by 1805 the current street grid had taken shape. Most of the merchants in the area settled and established themselves along Kiraly Street. At the beginning of the 20th century the areas of Erzsebetvaros and the City Park split off from this district.

Continent: Europe

Country: Hungary

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (II)(IV)

Date of Inscription: 2002

Budapest Nation's Capital

In 1841 Lajos Kossuth took up the idea of a large-scale promenade for Terezvaros. With the Union of Pest and Buda in 1873, Budapest truly became the nation's capital, developing at a faster rhythm than earlier; by the turn of the century it had become a modern metropolis with more than a million inhabitants. The symbol of this development is the radial Andrassy Avenue. There had been no attempts at organized urban development since the middle Ages, and the Hungarian capital needed to make up for this lack in a single great leap in terms of public services, transportation, and city planning. To execute this great leap forward a special commission, the Capital Communal Labour Board, was established on the model of the London Metropolitan Board of Works.

This commission planned and partially carried out construction of the avenue, as the modern city's stately promenade, along with the creation of essential infrastructure (transportation and utilities). The commission's establishment was decreed by a national act in 1870 and the state gave funds for its realization. The route of the avenue cut straight through an unregulated suburban area, thereby radically transforming its urban structure. Construction of the road began in 1872, the route was opened in 1876, and in one decade, by 1885, it was completed with 131 buildings.

World Heritage Budapest Hungary

Browse Gallery Plus UNESCO Storyline

The Siemens and Halske companies built the first underground railway on the European continent there in 1893-96. It starts in the heart of the city, near the banks of the Danube, and runs just beneath the surface for the length of Andrassy Avenue to the City Park. The railway served the Millennial Exhibition, organized in 1896 to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of the Hungarian conquest. This also led to the construction of a memorial on Heroes' Square (1894- 1906), the development and extension of the landscape garden, the development of the Szechenyi Baths as an establishment for spa culture, and the Vajdahunyad Castle that displayed the different periods of Hungarian architecture.

Slideshow for this Heritage Site

Browse All UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Hungary. The original UNESCO inscription Here!!!

Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex in Essen Germany

Consolidation of the mining claim area was completed in December 1847: the area concerned covered 13.2km2. At that time it was the northernmost mine in the region. It belongs to the Gelsenkirchen anticline, in which the coal seams, averaging 1.17m thick, are deeply stratified. Mining began in the mid-19th century at a depth of c 120m and finished at the fourteenth level (1200m). By the end of mining the underground roadways extended over 120km; they were accessed by twelve shafts, opened up progressively between 1847 and 1932. When Zollverein XII was opened, the earlier shafts were used solely for the movement of men and supplies; all the extracted coal was handled by the new shaft until the mine closed in 1986. The methods of mining evolved as technology developed from hand picks to mechanized coal cutting.t

Continent: Europe

Country: Germany

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (II)(III)

Date of Inscription: 2001

Zollverein Coal Mine

The coals being extracted at Zollverein were especially suitable for coking. Consequently, the first stack-type cokeovens were built there in 1857. The coking plant expanded considerably over the decades that followed. However, when the Zollverein mine was taken over by the steel company, Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG, in 1926, a new coking plant (the Nordstern plant) was built to process all the coal from its pits in the region. Coke production returned to Zollverein in the late 1950s, when the then holding company for the mines in the region, Gelsenkirchen Bergwerks AG, decided to build a new coking plant to supplement the Nordstern plant. It began production in 1961 from eight batteries, each of 24 ovens, producing 8600t per day; there were also facilities for processing by-products such as tar, sulphuric acid, benzene, ammonium compounds, and gas. This plant closed down in 1993 because of the fall in the demand for coke.

The construction of the stretch of the Cologne-Minden railway between Oberhausen and Hamm in 1847 was decisive for the location of the early Zollverein shafts, which were sunk 500m from the new line so as to facilitate transport of the coal and coke produced. The first passenger station did not open until forty years later. There were also links with the Emscher Valley line, also opened in 1847, which cut the north-western corner of the Zollverein concession. There followed a series of internal link lines during the next eighty years. It was connected with that of the neighbouring Bonifacius mine after Zollverein was taken over by Vereinigte Stahlwerke in 1926.

Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex in Essen Germany

Browse Gallery Plus UNESCO Storyline

Coal mining produces enormous quantities of waste material, which is deposited in the characteristic pit heaps. The earliest of these, to the east of shaft 1/2, was planted with trees in 1895 and used as a recreational area for the mine officials. A second grew to the west of shaft 1/2 from that time, and in 1932 was used for pond management, to dry out the boiler-ash and coal slurries from Zollverein XII. A heap begun in 1880 was partially cleared in 1958 to provide land for miners' housing. Other heaps were used for filling areas where coal had been removed from a steeply dipping seam and on an abandoned airfield.

Intensive mining resulted in a number of subsidences, in some places as deep as 25m. This necessitated clearance of irretrievably damaged housing and other facilities. Subsidence exacerbated the water problems in the so-called Emscher Zone, where mining adversely affected the gravitational flow and created large areas of swamp. Local industries and municipalities created the Emscher Association, which carried out a number of projects using pumping stations and creating polders.

The workforce steadily increased to c 5000 by the end of the 19th century. During the 20th century it fluctuated between 5000 and 8000. Because there were no alternative property developers when work began in 1847, Zollverein began to construct housing for its workers. Building projects were integrated with the mine operating programmes.

Slideshow for this Heritage Site

Large building sites were purchased and by 1860 146 flats were ready for occupancy; at that time the mine employed 710 workers. This "Hegemannshof Colony" expanded steadily (by the turn of the century it covered around 90ha), and subsequently two more colonies, "Ottekampshof" and "Beisen," were added. By World War I the property owned by the mine had grown to over 720ha. However, this was by no means adequate for a workforce that numbered some 5000 at that time. Between the two World Wars new workers' housing developed, notably the housing estate built by the Trust Agency for Miners' Housing. In the late 1920s the mine could provide each of its salaried employees and officials with an apartment, but only some 3000 were available for the 8000 workers.

After World War II new estates consisting of apartment blocks were built by the housing association established by Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG, such as the Kaldekirche, Westerbruch, and Kapitlacker estates from the 1950s. The Glückauf estate was built by the miners themselves working in collaboration. The houses were owned by private individuals. Two Pestalozzi villages were also built for apprentices. In 1958 there were 7061 dwellings available for a workforce of 8000.

From the start the mine provided consumer services for its employees, selling food and manufactured goods at low prices. They began on a "cooperative" basis, profits being returned to consumers in the form of an annual dividend. This scheme, with its six outlets, was taken over as a company enterprise by Vereinigte Stahlwerke. The system gradually declined after World War II because of competition from commercial stores, and the remaining outlets were bought out in the 1970s.

From the mid-1920s the mine provided welfare services for its employees. The first welfare centre was set up in 1928 (it was rehoused in 1938) and the second in 1934. A large modern welfare centre designed by Fritz Schupp was built in 1953. However, Zollverein closed its welfare facilities in the early 1960s, in line with the current trend in the Ruhr.

Browse All UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Germany. The original UNESCO inscription Here!!!

Tokaj Wine Region Historic Cultural Landscape Hungary

The entire landscape of the Tokaji wine region, including both vineyards and long established settlements, vividly illustrates a specialized form of traditional land use and represents a distinct viticultural tradition that has existed for at least 1,000 years and which has survived intact to the present day. The Magyar tribes who entered the area at the end of the 9th century assigned special significance to the region, as they believed (with some justification) that it was the centre of the empire of Attila the Hun, with whom they closely identified themselves. It became a protected refuge for Hungarians in the centuries that followed in the face of pressure from invading Mongols and others, as well as an important commercial crossroads for Polish merchants travelling to the Balkans and elsewhere.

Continent: Europe

Country: Hungary

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (III)(V)

Date of Inscription: 2002

Tokaj Wine Region's 12th Centaury

Settlers were welcomed from as early as the 12th century, when Walloon and Italian immigrants were invited in, joining the Germans who had been there since the beginning of the Hungarian kingdom. In the 16th century the region came under Bohemian Hussite domination for a while, but was reunited with the Hungarian kingdom by the last great Hungarian king, Hunyadi Matyas (Matthias Corvinus). It was during the Ottoman period that the Tokaji Aszu for which the region became world famous was first produced. Legend has it that fears of Turkish raiders delayed the harvest in Lorantffy Mihaly's domain until the grapes had shrivelled and Botrytis infection had set in, creating the 'noble rot' (pourriture noble ). Nonetheless, the pastor Szepsi Laczko Mate made wine from them, presenting the result to the daughter of the overlord.

The mild climate makes coupled with the soil quality and aspects of the slopes make Tokaj perfect for cultivating grapes. The settlement system and forms of the Tokaji Wine Region are dictated by the morphological and hydrographic features of the area. There are two main axes of settlement, one the river Bodrog and the other the Szerencs stream and the river Hernád at the western edge. There is a chain of settlements along the right bank of the Bodrog as it meanders at the foot of the Zemplen mountain range.

Tokaj Wine Region Historic Cultural Landscape Hungary

Browse Gallery Plus UNESCO Storyline

Other settlements are to be found in the valleys of the streams that feed into the Bodrog, which in its turn joins the Tisza at Tokaj, an ancient crossing point of the main river. The Szerencs opens wide into the Takta and has settlements on both banks. The name 'Tokaj' is derived from an Armenian word for grape that came into the Hungarian language as early as the 10th century, thus giving a date for the creation of the settlement. It is also evidence that viticulture was already being practised here at that time.

Slideshow for this Heritage Site

The built heritage of the region is symbolic of its history and its socio-economic structure. There are to be found medieval Roman Catholic churches (one in each settlement), 18th- to 19th-century Orthodox churches, and Jewish synagogues, princely and aristocratic castles and mansions, and more humble houses, wine stores, and workshops. Evidence of early settlement is the 12th century Romanesque church at Bodrogalszi (in the buffer zone). There are ruined 14th-century castles at Tokaj and Tallya in the nominated area and Monok, Sarospatak, and Szerencs in the buffer zone. Noble mansions from the 18th and 19th centuries are to be found at Tarcal and in the buffer zone.

The most characteristic structures in Tokaj are the wine cellars: that of King Kalman in Tarcal is known to have been in existence as early as 1110. There are two basic types of cellar in Tokaj: the vaulted and the excavated. The former was essentially an open space below a residential building, excavated before the house was built and accessed from the porch. The grapes were processed in a room at the rear of the house, immediately above the cellar. The excavated cellars were not connected directly with the residential buildings. All that is visible on the surface is a stone entrance structure with a latticed wooden or steel gate. Cellars carved into the volcanic tuff did not require reinforcement by vaulting. Some 80-85% of the cellars in Tokaj were made in this way.

Of special interest are the multi-level labyrinthine cellars with unsystematic floors plans in which wine was stored and matured in casks made from sessile oak. The most famous is the cellar network in the Ungvari district of Satoraljaujhely, the result of interconnecting no fewer than 27 cellars at different levels.

Browse All UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Hungary. The original UNESCO inscription Here!!!

Classical Weimar Germany

The high artistic quality of the public and private buildings and parks in and around the town testify to the remarkable cultural flowering of the Weimar classical period. Enlightened ducal patronage attracted many of the leading writers and thinkers in Germany, such as Goethe, Schiller and Herder, to Weimar in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, making it the cultural centre of the Europe of the day. Weimar became the capital of the Duchy of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach in 1572. For many years the painter Lucas Cranach the Elder worked in Weimar, where he died in 1553. This marked the start of a long period of growing cultural importance in which many painters, writers, poets, and philosopher lived in the city - Johann Sebastian Bach, Christoph Martin Wieland, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Schiller, Franz Liszt, Henry van de Velde, and Walter Gropius.

Continent: Europe

Country: Germany

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (III)(VI)

Date of Inscription: 1998

Classical Weimar's Eleven Separate Buildings

Goethe's House: A Baroque town house was built in 1707-9 and underwent a number of alterations during Goethe's occupancy. The original interior furnishings are preserved in a number of rooms. Schiller's House: A simple late Baroque house built in 1777 incorporating part of a 16th-century outbuilding (the Mint). Most of the rooms are furnished as they were during the lifetime of the poet.

City Church, Herder House and Old High School: A three-aisled hall church with five bays and a pentagonal chancel and a west tower surmounted by an octagonal spire, containing an altar triptych by Lucas Cranach the Elder. The three-storey Herder House was built in the mid-16th century on the foundations of an earlier Renaissance structure. The Old High School, commissioned by Duke Wilhelm Ernst, was built in simple Baroque style.

Classical Weimar Germany

Browse Gallery Plus UNESCO Storyline

City Castle: The present ensemble is an imposing slightly irregular four-winged building round a large courtyard. The decorations and furnishings of the interior are in classical style.

The Dowager's Palace: The centre of intellectual life at the height of classical Weimar consists of a group of relatively plain Baroque two- and three-storey buildings round a courtyard. The Duchess Anna Amalia Library: in 1761 Duchess Anna Amalia commissioned the State Architect to convert the Renaissance 'Little French Castle' into a library. The main central section is a three-storey building on a rectangular plan in Baroque style. The Princes' Tomb and the Historic Cemetery: Grand Duke Carl August commissioned the construction of a family tomb from Clemens Wenzeslaus Coundray in 1823. In addition to members of the family, Schiller and Goethe were also buried in this mausoleum.

Park on the Ilm with the Roman House, Goethe's Garden, and Garden House: South of the town in the valley through which the Ilm flows. It is dominated in the north by Goethe's Garden House and in the south by the Roman House.

Slideshow for this Heritage Site

Belvedere Castle, Orangery and Park: The castle is a two-storey Baroque structure; the central section is square in plan and has a small tower surmounted by a cupola. On either side there are connecting buildings leading to oval-plan pavilions with pointed cupolas. The orangery is U-shaped in plan, with the house of the head gardener in the centre.

Tiefurt Castle and Park: A modest two-storey Baroque building linked by a wooden-framed to the former farm building, with buildings and memorials within the park.

Ettersburg Castle and Park: the Old Castle consists of three wings round a spacious courtyard. The shorter east wing abuts the castle church. The New Castle is a more compact four-storey structure. The park is relatively small and abuts the surrounding forest.

Browse All UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Germany. The original UNESCO inscription Here!!!

Thracian Tomb of Sveshtari Bulgaria

The discovery in 1982 of the Thracian tomb of Sveshtari was one of the most spectacular archaeological events of the 20th century. The tomb itself is a unique artistic achievement with its half-human, half-vegetable caryatids enclosed in chitons in the shape of inverted palmettes. The fact the original polychromy has been preserved with its ochre, brown, blue, red and lilac shades adds to the bewitching charm of an expressive composition where the anthropomorphic supports conjure up the image of a choir of mourners frozen in the abstract positions of a ritual dance. The tomb is an exceptional testimony to the culture of the Getae, a Thracian people living in the north of Hemus, in contact with the Greek and Hyperborean worlds according to ancient geographers.

Continent: Europe

Country: Bulgaria

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (I)(III)

Date of Inscription: 1985

Thracian Tomb2

The tomb is located in a region declared an archaeological reserve, near the town of Razgra between the villages of Malak Porovetz and Sveshtari in Isperih municipality, in the river Krapinetz canyon and on the hills around. The time when the Sveshtari tomb was built (mid-3rd century BC) coincided with the period of a great political, economic and cultural upsurge of the Thracian tribe of the Getae. The rich decoration and perfect architecture of the tomb demonstrate the political power of the ruler.

Under a tumulus 11.5 m high and roughly 70 m in diameter, geophysical prospecting revealed, to the south-east, the monumental entrance to a hypogeum of exceptional interest, including a dromos, an antechamber, and two rectangular funeral chambers. The layout of this Thracian king's tomb, which is very different from that of Thracian tombs with cupolas such as that of Kazanlak, fits a Hellenistic model to be found in Macedonia, Asia Minor and Egypt. The tomb of Sveshtari is, however, unique in its architectural decor and in the specific character of funeral rites revealed by the excavation.

Thracian Tomb of Sveshtari Bulgaria

Browse Gallery Plus UNESCO Storyline

The tomb consists of a corridor (dromos) and three square chambers: antechamber, lateral chamber, and main burial chamber covered by a semi-cylindrical vault. The plan of the building provides a new interesting example in Thracian building practice. The decoration of the tomb is executed in the spirit of the contemporary Hellenistic architecture. Its entrance is flanked by two rectangular columns (antae). Above them there is an architrave plate with a frieze in relief, consisting of stylized bovine heads (bucrania), rosettes and garlands. Ten beautiful female figures with hands raised high like caryatids are impressive. The figures are about 1.20 m tall, presented frontally, wearing long sleeveless dresses (chitons) tied with a thin belt below the breasts.

Slideshow for this Heritage Site

Two funerary beds, human bones and grave offerings were discovered in the central chamber. From the scattered stone details it was possible to reconstruct the facade of the tomb (aedicula), consisting of pilasters, cornice and a pediment, and closed with three stone doors. Being situated in front of the large funerary bed as a symbol of the boundary between life and death, the aedicula isolated the grave of the deified ruler (the most sacral part of the tomb) from the rest of the place. In the centre of the composition the goddess is offering a gold wreath to the ruler, depicted as a horseman facing her. On both sides of them there are processions of servants and armour-bearers carrying different gifts in their hands.

The layout of the central chamber which contained two stone funeral beds and an aedicula imitates the arrangement of a peristyle house: five half-columns and ten sculpted feminine caryatids in high relief on limestone flagstones support the architrave barrel-vaulted Doric frieze with its triglyphs and metopes spanning the room at mid-height.

In the north-west lunette, on the wall opposite the entrance, there is a painting depicting the deceased as hero, who, in the presence of several protagonists, is advancing on horseback towards the central figure of a deity extending a laurel wreath. Skeletal material found during excavation bears witness to the horse sacrifices that accompanied the funerary rites.

Browse All UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Bulgaria. The original UNESCO inscription Here!!!

Wartburg Castle Germany

The Castle of Wartburg is an outstanding monument of the feudal period in central Europe. It is rich in cultural associations, most notably its role as the place of exile of Martin Luther, who composed his German translation of the New Testament there. It is also a powerful symbol of German integration and unity. The legendary creation of the castle is attributed to Count Ludwig der Springer. The first steps in its construction were taken in 1067, and it became one of the key points in the early years of Ludovician sovereignty.

Continent: Europe

Country: Germany

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (III)(VI)

Date of Inscription: 1999

Wartburg Castle

This sovereignty grew more firmly established during the first half of the 12th century. Raised to the dignity of Landgraves, the Ludovicians supported the policies of the Stauffen emperors. The building of the palace in the second half of the 12th century illustrates their status as Princes of the Empire. In 1227 Heinrich Raspe IV, the brother of Ludwig IV, succeeded him and, espousing the pope's cause, was appointed King of Germany on the initiative of Innocent IV. His death in 1247 ended the Ludovician dynasty.

The Margrave of Wettin, Heinrich von Meissen, took possession of Wartburg. The transfer of the seat of power to Gotha and subsequently to Weimar at the beginning of the 15th century marked the beginning of the castle's decline. From the 16th century onwards, the castle was kept more or less in a state of repair; although abandoned as a seat of power, its strategic importance was nonetheless highlighted several times. After the Napoleonic wars, a national sentiment emerged which revelled in the image of ancient Germany as symbolized by Wartburg Castle.

Wartburg Castle Germany

Browse Gallery Plus UNESCO Storyline

In the first half of the 19th century, on the initiative of the Grand Duke of Saxony, the entire site was completely renovated: the remains of the palace were raised from their ruins, the curtain wall restored, and the remainder of the buildings reconstructed under the supervision of architect Hugo von Ritgen. The large parts played by assumptions in the reconstruction have rather more to do with the romantic imagination than with historical reality.

Slideshow for this Heritage Site

In 1945, the bombing of Eisenach spared Wartburg, although the castle was later pillaged by Soviet troops. The German Democratic Republic made Wartburg Castle a national monument; since the reunification of Germany, restoration work has concentrated primarily on the interiors and on the problems of preserving the stonework on the palace facades.

The castle occupies a rocky spur looking north and south, in the midst of the forest that looks down over the city of Eisenach. Its layout corresponds in essence to that of the original fortress, particularly the palace, the ramparts, the South Tower, and the outworks, which are now partially buried or in ruins. In architectural terms, The rocky spur is reached from the northern end, occupied by a tower with a drawbridge, followed by a number of outbuildings which form an outer courtyard. Next follows the lower courtyard, the main features of which are the keep and the palace, onto which the Knights' Baths back. The South Tower marks the farther end of the spur. The centre of the lower courtyard is occupied by a cistern.

Browse All UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Germany. The original UNESCO inscription Here!!!

Rock-Hewn Churches of Ivanovo Bulgaria

In the valley of the Roussenski Lom River, in north-east Bulgaria, a complex of rock-hewn churches, chapels, monasteries and cells developed in the vicinity of the village of Ivanovo. This is where the first hermits had dug out their cells and churches during the 12th century. The 14th-century murals testify to the exceptional skill of the artists of the Tarnovo School of painting. he period of the history of Bulgaria from the last years of the 12th century, when for the second time the country became independent from Byzantium, until the Ottoman Empire annexation in 1396, is known as the Second Bulgarian Empire.

Continent: Europe

Country: Bulgaria

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (II)(III)

Date of Inscription: 1979

Bulgarian Orthodox Christianity

Independence from Byzantium could not be complete until the Bulgarian clergy became dependents of the Patriarch of Costantinopoli. In 1204, the Kaloyan Tsar signed an agreement with the Papacy in order to return as part of the Roman Catholic Church. It was not to be a long-lasting agreement. During the reign of Tsar Ivan Ansen II, Bulgaria once again embraced Orthodox Christianity, but with its own Patriarch, not subordinate to Costantinople.

The first Patriarch was the monk Gioacchino, who shared with Ivan Ansen the plan to expand the Bulgarian church. Before taking over the Patriarchal throne he had lived as a hermit in a cave in the river Rusenski Lom valley, not far from the village of Ivanovo. The monk achieved so high a level of sanctity that Tzar Ivan Ansen entrusted to him the construction of a monastery, something which contributed to strengthen his image as a merciful monarch. The convent was built between 1218 and 1235 and had from the outset a rocky character; all its buildings were dug into the limestone cliff gorge of the river and its contributories.

Rock-Hewn Churches of Ivanovo Bulgaria

Browse Gallery Plus UNESCO Storyline

In the years between 1331 and 1371 the monastery, thanks to further new royal donations, acquired the best of its artistic patrimony: the splendid frescoes attributable to the painters of the so-called Tarnovo School.

Slideshow for this Heritage Site

During the conquest of the country by the Ottoman Turks in 1396, the forgotten monastery of Ivanovo fell quickly into ruins and was abandoned. The solid limestone out of which it was carved and on which frescoes were painted enabled it to resist to the inclemency of the weather. Along the two walls of the Rusenski Lom river gorge there is a labyrinth of cells, of rooms, and above all of churches and chapels dug into the cliff face which were originally completely covered by frescoes, but of which only five are still in good condition.

Bearing in mind the fact that three of these churches go back to the reign of Ivan or immediately afterwards, they constitute remarkable evidence of the revolution in painting during the two centuries of the Second Bulgarian Empire. In the churches of the first period, the human figures are painted in the same realistic style, with oval faces and fleshy lips, and the colours of the clothing are bright. The 14th-century frescoes by contrast are in the classical style of the Palaeologic period.

The five churches and their frescoes are testimony to the Byzantine art influence in Bulgaria. The creation and decoration of these rock-hewn churches is largely attributable to the donations of the Bulgarian Tzars in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Browse All UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Bulgaria. The original UNESCO inscription Here!!!

Museumsinsel Museum Island Berlin Germany

The art museum is a social phenomenon that owes its origins to the Age of Enlightenment and its extension to all people to the French Revolution. The Museumsinsel is the most outstanding example of this concept given material form and a symbolic central urban setting, and one that illustrates the evolution of modern museum design over more than a century. The present importance of the Museumsinsel began when the Altes Museum was built to the designs of Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1824-28. A plan to develop the part of the island behind this museum was drawn up in 1841 by the court architect, Friedrich August Stuler, on the orders of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The first element of this plan to be built was the Neues Museum (1843-47). The next step did not take place until 1866, when the Nationalgalerie, the work of Johann Heinrich Strack, was built. Another two decades passed before the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum (now the Bodemuseum) was built in 1897-1904 to the designs of Ernst von Ihne, and Stüler's plan was completed in 1909-30 with the construction of Alfred Messel's Pergamonmuseum.

Continent: Europe

Country: Germany

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (II)(IV)

Date of Inscription: 1999

Museumsinsel five museum buildings

The Altes Museum is a two-storey structure with a rectangular ground plan on a high base with its exhibition rooms ranged round two inner courts and a central two-storey domed rotunda with skylight. The side and rear elevations are relatively plain, but that facing the site of the former Schloss is a high portico supported on eighteen sandstone Ionic columns and two corner pilasters. Access is by means of a seven-bay wide stairway with broad stringers.

The layout of the Neues Museum is comparable with that of the Altes Museum, but the rotunda of the latter is replaced by the monumental main staircase. Unlike the Altes Museum, to which it was originally linked by a passageway, it is a relatively plain structure, more in the style of the Schinkel School. The richly decorated interior contrasts with the plain exterior. There is an interesting innovative structural feature. The traditional low-vaulted ceilings of timber beams and masonry are replaced on the third floor by an arch-chord construction using cast-iron arches and pairs of wrought-iron chords. This lightweight form of construction was necessitated by the poor foundation parameters.

Museum Island Germany

Browse Gallery Plus UNESCO Storyline

The Nationalgalerie, a high ashlar block-like base with rectangular windows, is surmounted by a Corinthian pseudo-dipteral temple of in antis type with an open portico. There are also high rectangular windows in the exterior wall set back behind the columns. The rear is in the form of a semi-circular conch. A double-winged open staircase with five flights of steps leads up to the pedimented portico with its Corinthian columns. The building is clad throughout with Nebra sandstone. The four-storey building has a rectangular ground plan with apse-like terminal features. There is a cellar and an exhibition floor in the basement section and two exhibition halls in the superstructure. It is lavishly decorated with symbolic imagery in the form of sculptures, reliefs, and paintings. The upper exhibition floor was originally laid out as a vast banqueting hall, but is now converted for displays.

Slideshow for this Heritage Site

The Bodemuseum is a neo-Baroque structure in a commanding position on the north-western tip of the island. Clad in sandstone and with a low stone base, it rises to two storeys, linked by Corinthian pilasters and crowned with a balustrade. The rounded entrance frontage is decorated with the same columns and with rounded open arches. The entrance with its impressive staircase is beneath the smaller of the two domes. It gives on to two lateral wings and a centre section which are linked by transverse sections so as to form five inner courtyards.

The three-winged Pergamonmuseum was built to exhibit the greatly expanded collections of antiquities resulting from German excavations at Pergamon and other Greek sites in Asia Minor as well as those from Mesopotamia formerly housed in the Vorderasiatisches Museum. It rises directly from the Spree, like the Bodemuseum, with which it is harmonized in scale and proportions. The centre block and the side wings are windowless, given structure by flat giant pilasters and steep pediments.

Browse All UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Germany. The original UNESCO inscription Here!!!

Ferto-Neusiedler Cultural Landscape Hungary

The Ferto-Neusiedler Lake and its surroundings are an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement and land use representative of a culture. The present character of the landscape is the result of millennia-old land-use forms based on stockraising and viticulture to an extent not found in other European lake areas. The historic centre of the medieval free town of Rust constitutes an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement representative of the area. The town exhibits the special building mode of a society and culture within which the lifestyles of townspeople and farmers form a united whole. The Ferto-Neusiedler Lake has been the meeting place of different cultures for eight millennia, and this is graphically demonstrated by its varied landscape, the result of an evolutionary and symbiotic process of human interaction with the physical environment.

Continent: Europe

Country: Hungary

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (V)

Date of Inscription: 2001

Ferto-Neusiedler Lake

The lake lies between the Alps, 70 km distant, and the lowlands in the territory of two states, Austria and Hungary. The lake itself is in an advanced state of sedimentation, with extensive reed stands. It has existed for 500 years within an active water management regime. In the 19th century, canalization of Hanság shut the lake off from its freshwater marshland. Since 1912 completion of a circular dam ending at Hegykö to the south has prevented flooding.

Two broad periods may be discerned: from around 6000 BC until the establishment of the Hungarian state in the 11th century AD and from the 11th century until the present. The World Heritage site lies in a region that was Hungarian territory from the 10th century until the First World War. From the 7th century BC the lake shore was densely populated, initially by people of the early Iron Age Hallstatt culture and on through late prehistoric and Roman times. In the fields of almost every village around the Lake there are remains of Roman villas. The basis of the current network of towns and villages was formed in the 12th and 13th centuries, their markets flourishing from 1277 onwards, when they were relieved of many fiscal duties.

Ferto-Neusiedler Cultural Landscape Hungary

Browse Gallery Plus UNESCO Storyline

The mid-13th century Tatar invasion left this area unharmed, and it enjoyed uninterrupted development throughout medieval times until the Turkish conquest in the late 16th century. The economic basis throughout was the export of animals and wine. Rust in particular prospered on the wine trade. Its refortification in the early 16th century as a response to the then emerging Ottoman threat marked the beginning of a phase of construction in the area, first with fortifications and then, during the 17th-19th centuries, with the erection and adaptation of domestic buildings. The remarkable rural architecture of the villages surrounding the lake and several 18th-and 19th-century palaces add to the area's considerable cultural interest. The palace of the township of Nagycenk and the Fertöd Palace are included in detached areas of the core zone outside the buffer zone.

Slideshow for this Heritage Site

Széchenyi Palace, at the southern end of the lake, is a detached ensemble of buildings in the centre of a large park, initially built in the mid-18th century on the site of a former manor house. It acquired some of its present form and appearance around 1800. The Baroque palace garden was originated in the 17th century. In the late 18th century an English-style landscape garden was laid out.

Between 1769 and 1790 Josef Haydn's compositions were first heard in the Fertöd Esterházy Palace. It was the most important 18th-century palace of Hungary, built on the model of Versailles. The plan of the palace, garden and park was on geometrical lines which extended to the new village of Esterháza. There, outside the palace settlement, were public buildings, industrial premises and residential quarters. The palace itself is laid out around a square with rounded internal corners. To the south is an enormous French Baroque garden that has been changed several times, the present layout being essentially that of 1762.

Browse All UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Hungary. The original UNESCO inscription Here!!!

Garden Kingdom of Dessau Worlitz Germany

The Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz is an outstanding example of the application of the philosophical principles of the Age of the Enlightenment to the design of a landscape that integrates art, education and economy in a harmonious whole. The first essays in landscape design began with the foundation of Oranienbaum, with its unified layout of town, palace, and park from 1683 onwards. The resulting complete Baroque ensemble, with obvious Dutch connections deriving from its designer, Cornelis Ryckwaert, has survived to the present day.

Continent: Europe

Country: Germany

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (II)(IV)

Date of Inscription: 2000

English Landscape Gardens

The developments on these lines took place around 1700 with the reclamation of marshy areas along the Elbe and the creation of planned villages and farmsteads. During the reign of Prince Leopold III Friedrich Franz of Anhalt-Dessau (1740-1817), an extensive landscape design project was begun around 1765 over the entire principality. This ambitious programme was launched in close collaboration with the architect and art theorist Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff (1736-1800). Landscape design, public education, and encouragement of the arts were closely integrated in this scheme. Wörlitz became the point of departure for wide-ranging improvements based on English landscape gardens and neoclassical architecture.

This unified scheme of buildings, gardens, and works of art, with a pervasive educational theme became the outward expression of the Enlightenment. Schloss Wörlitz was built in 1769-73 and it was the first neoclassical building in Germany. The Gothic House (1774) established a vogue for Gothic Revival buildings all across Europe. A number of other landscape projects in the principality date from this period. One of the most innovatory was the Chinese garden at Oranienbaum (1790), based on the theories of the English architect Sir William Chambers.

Garden Kingdom of Dessau Worlitz Germany

Browse Gallery Plus UNESCO Storyline

The roads and dykes that were essential for infrastructural development were planted with avenues of fruit trees, giving them an ornamental aspect. By the time Prince Franz died in 1817 virtually the entire principality had become a unified garden. Despite industrialization and the consequent expansion of Dessau since 1900, the characteristic features of the landscape have been preserved.

Slideshow for this Heritage Site

The Garden Kingdom lies in the meadow landscape of the rivers Elbe and Mulde, the floodplains of which reach in places to the parklands. The core of the Garden Kingdom is the historic gardens, with their buildings and sculpture. In addition to the historic garden enclosures, neoclassical and neo-Gothic structures such as dyke watchtowers, hostelries, statues and bridges are to be found widely distributed, acting as key features of the landscape. The agricultural areas, such as fields, meadows, and orchards, have been improved by ornamental tree plantings, so as to enhance the aesthetic appearance of the landscape.

The western group consists of the Kühnauer Park, the Georgium, and the Beckerbruch. The Kühnauer Park, on the southern shore of the Kühnauersee, is a narrow elongated garden laid out in 1805 with views over the lake and its islands. Its orchards and vineyard have been partially restored. The main viewpoint is the Vineyard House, an Italianate classical building of 1818-20. Other buildings are the neoclassical Schloss Kühnau (c . 1780) and the Romano-Byzantine Church (1828-30). The Georgium or Georgengarten is a small neoclassical country house surrounded by a garden of 21.3 ha in the English style.

The garden contains a number of buildings and monuments, including the Roman Ruin and an open rotunda temple. The adjacent area of the Beckenbruch was left relatively untouched as a landscape of marsh and meadows, with a few statues and small structures inserted into it. It is designed so as to merge gradually into the Georgengarten. The central group is made up of the Luisium, the Sieglitzer Berg, the Tiergarten (part), and the villages of Mildensee and Waldersee. A wetland to the north-east of Dessau forms part of this group. The area of meadows in the bend of the Mulde was originally part of the system of dykes surrounding Dessau, laid out as garden scenery; it is now the Schillerpark.

Browse All UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Germany. The original UNESCO inscription Here!!!