Another German site selected: UNESCO declares Danube Limes a World Heritage Site

Friday 30 July 2021

Another German site selected
UNESCO declares Danube Limes a World Heritage Site

From Scotland to North Africa: The entire 6000 kilometer long Roman Empire is to be a World Heritage Site. Along the Danube Limes, the next section has now been added, which also winds between Bad Gögging and Passau through Germany. It is already the fifth new German World Heritage Site.

UNESCO has designated the Danube Limes as part of the range of the ancient Roman Empire as a new World Heritage Site. The Responsible Committee of the United Nations Organization for Education, Science, Culture and Communication (UNESCO) announced the decision at its 44th meeting in Fuzhou, China. In its Bavarian section, the Danube Limes extend from Bad Gögging to Regensburg and Straubing to Passau in the district of Kelheim.

At the UNESCO meeting, which runs until tomorrow, Saturday, Germany has already received its fifth prize. Four applications were previously successful: Bad Ems, the spa towns of Baden-Baden and Bad Kissingen; Lower Germanic Limes; The Mathildenhohe Darmstadt; As well as Jewish sites in Speyer, Worms and Mainz. Only cultural and natural sites of outstanding universal value are designated as World Heritage.

Before the decision, tensions had risen after Hungary temporarily withdrew from the joint application along with Germany, Austria and Slovakia. The committee then deferred the decision that was actually planned for Monday and initially set up a working group for further deliberations.

Limes extend from Great Britain to Central and Eastern Europe and from the Middle East to North Africa. UNESCO is striving for a full international inscription of the 6000 km long “Borders of the Roman Empire”. On Tuesday, the Lower Germanic Limes were added to the World Heritage List, which run for some 400 kilometers along the Rhine. The border section begins at Rhinebrohl in Rhineland-Palatinate and ends in the North Sea in the Netherlands. There is a distance of 220 km between Bonn and Clev in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The boundary that is not only divided, but connected

“I am delighted that the World Heritage Committee has honored Danube Limes today,” said Maria Bohmer, president of the German Commission for UNESCO: “For the Romans, the Danube was not just a natural frontier, it was also an important link between goods and For ideas above all else,” Bomer says. So the Danube Limes not only diverged, but also intertwined very different worlds with each other. “It is an outstanding testament to Roman civilization, whose strength has always been to absorb external influences,” Bohmer said.

The fortifications of Hadrian’s Wall and Antonine Wall in Great Britain (1987/2008) and Upper German-Rhetian Limes in Germany (2005) had already been honored, marking the Roman Empire’s border from Scotland to Slovakia now as a globe. has been recognized. Heritage Site. With the newly registered components, however, the Danube Limes is still not complete, Michel Müntfering, Minister of State for International Cultural Policy at the Foreign Office, said: “We now need to connect sites on the eastern side of the Danube to the western sections. Limes,” said Müntfering: “The Danube Limes not only respects a special landscape of monuments, but also recognizes a long-standing association with Austria and Slovakia.”

The World Heritage Committee that decided on the award is made up of 21 elected Contracting States to the 1972 World Heritage Convention. As a rule, it makes decisions annually on the inscription of new cultural and natural sites on the World Heritage List. Due to the pandemic, the conference was postponed last year. The World Heritage List has more than 1100 cultural and natural sites in 167 countries. Of them, 51 are considered threatened.