6 European sites added to UNESCO World Heritage List
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 08:25:00 07/08/2008
QUEBEC CITY -- French citadels, Slovakian churches, German early 20th century low-income housing, and a Croatian island farmed for 2,400 years were among the sites added to UNESCO's World Heritage List on Monday.
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has been meeting in this oldest of Canadian cities since Wednesday to consider adding up to 45 candidates to its coveted list of protected architectural and natural wonders.
Six sites in Europe were chosen at this session:
SAN MARINO HISTORIC CENTRE AND MOUNT TITANO:
With the inscription, San Marino enters the coveted list for the first time, said the committee, "as a testimony to the continuity of a free republic since the Middle Ages."
The San Marino Historic Centre, with its fortification towers, walls, gates and bastions, dates back to the foundation of the republic as a city-state in the 13th century.
Thanks to its position on top of Mount Titano, it was not affected by the urban transformations of the industrial era to today.
FORTIFICATIONS OF VAUBAN:
Thirteen groups of fortified buildings and sites in France were said by the committee to be among the finest examples of the work of Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban, a military engineer of King Louis XIV.
The serial property includes citadels built on plains, urban bastion walls, bastion towers and a residence, and were listed for "bearing witness to the peak of classic fortifications, typical of western military architecture."
Vauban also played a major role in the history of fortification in Europe and as far away as the American continent, Russia and East Asia.
STARI GRAD PLAIN:
The cultural landscape of Croatia's Stari Grad Plain on the Adriatic island of Hvar has remained practically intact since it was first colonized by the Ionian Greeks in the fourth century BC.
Cultivation of grapes and olives on this fertile plain has been ongoing since Greek times, and "bears testimony to the ancient geometrical system of land division used by the ancient Greeks," said the committee.
BERLIN MODERNISM HOUSING ESTATES
These six housing estates in Berlin testify to "innovative housing policies from 1910 to 1933" when the German city was particularly progressive socially, politically and culturally, said the committee.
The building reform movement was said to have contributed to improving housing and living conditions for people with low incomes.
Bruno Taut, Martin Wagner and Walter Gropius were among the leading architects of these projects which exercised considerable influence on the development of housing around the world.
MANTUA AND SABBIONETA:
In the Po valley in the north of Italy, these two towns, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) apart, represent two aspects of Renaissance town planning: the renewal of an existing city, and the period’s theories about planning an ideal city.
Typically, Mantua’s layout is irregular, with parts showing different stages of its growth since the Roman period.
Sabbioneta, created in the second half of the 16th century under the rule of a single person, Vespasiano Gonzaga Colonna, can be described as a single-period city and has a right-angle grid layout.
The ideals of the Renaissance, fostered by the Gonzaga family, are present in the towns’ morphology and architecture.
THE WOODEN CHURCHES OF THE SLOVAK PART OF CARPATHIAN MOUNTAIN AREA:
Two Roman Catholic, three Protestant and three Greek Orthodox churches built between the 16th and 18th centuries in small, poor villages in an area formerly known as Upland Hungary present "good examples of a rich local tradition of religious architecture, marked by the meeting of Latin and Byzantine cultures."
Their cultural significance, according to UNESCO, is enriched by their interiors decorated with paintings on the walls and ceilings and other works of art.
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