Historic City of Trogir

Historic City of Trogir UNESCO World Heritage Site Croatia

From the World Heritage inscription: Trogir is an excellent example of a medieval town built on and conforming with the layout of a Hellenistic and Roman city that has conserved its urban fabric to an exceptional degree and with the minimum of modern interventions, in which the trajectory of social and cultural development is clearly …

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Stari Grad Plain

Stari Grad Plain UNESCO World Heritage Site, Croatia

From the World Heritage inscription: Stari Grad Plain represents a comprehensive system of land use and agricultural colonization by the Greeks, in the 4th century BC. Its land organization system, based on geometrical parcels with dry stone wall boundaries (chora), is exemplary. This system was completed from the very first by a rainwater recovery system …

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Historical Complex of Split with the Palace of Diocletian

Historical Complex of Split with the Palace of Diocletian UNESCO World Heritage Site

From the World Heritage inscription: The importance of Diocletian’s Palace far transcends local significance because of its level of preservation and the buildings of succeeding historical periods, starting in the Roman period, which form the very tissue of old Split. The palace is one of the most famous and integral architectural and cultural buildings on …

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How to Visit Stari Most & the Old City of Mostar

Old Bridge Area of the Old City of Mostar UNESCO World Heritage Site

One of the more iconic sites in all of Bosnia and Herzegovina—the old bridge in Mostar—is actually not that old. At least, the current incarnation of Stari Most is a lot newer than one might think given the bridge’s long history. Originally built in 1557 under the administration of the Ottoman Empire, it was destroyed …

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Natural and Cultural-Historical Region of Kotor

Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor World Heritage Site

From the World Heritage inscription: The culturo-historical region of Kotor has exerted considerable influence, over a span of time and within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture and human settlement. Kotor and its neighbors were main bridgeheads of Venice on the southern Adriatic coast. Its art, goldsmithing, and architecture schools had …

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Quseir Amra

Quseir Amra UNESCO World Heritage Site, Jordan

From the World Heritage inscription for Quseir Amra: Quseir Amra bears exceptional testimony to the Omayyad civilization which was imbued with a pre-Islamic secular culture whose austere religious environment only left behind insignificant traces in the visual arts. It is the best conserved architectural ensemble, if not the most complete, of all the Omayyad palaces …

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Um er-Rasas (Kastrom Mefa’a)

Um er-Rasas (Kastrom Mefa'a) UNESCO World Heritage Site

From the World Heritage inscription for Um er-Rasas (Kastrom Mefa’a): Um er-Rasas (Kastrom Mefa’a) is strongly associated with monasticism and with the spread of monotheism, including Islam, throughout the region. The artistic and technical qualities of the mosaic floor of St Stephen’s church justify describing Um er-Rasas as a masterpiece of human creative genius. It …

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Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna

UNESCO World Heritage Site #242: Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna

From the World Heritage inscription: The early Christian religious monuments in Ravenna are of outstanding significance by virtue of the supreme artistry of the mosaic art that they contain, and also because of the crucial evidence that they provide of artistic and religious relationships and contacts at an important period of European cultural history. In …

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Ferrara, City of the Renaissance, and its Po Delta

Ferrara, City of the Renaissance, and its Po Delta World Heritage Site

From the World Heritage inscription: Ferrara is an outstanding planned Renaissance city which has retained its urban fabric virtually intact. The developments in town planning expressed in Ferrara were to have a profound influence on the development of urban design throughout the succeeding centuries. The brilliant Este court attracted a constellation of artists, poets, and …

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