Saint Petersburg is one of the two biggest cities in Russia. Many people say it is one of the most attractive cities in the world—and I would agree with them. Even UNESCO called it the eighth most attractive city in the world. It was built for the tsar Peter the Great, who hired the best …
The Isle of Man (also known as the Isle of Mann) is one of the most unique bits of Europe and the British Isles. It’s culturally, historically, linguistically, and geographically different from all the other islands surrounding it and there are a lot of interesting facts many don’t know about it. Outside of the UK …
From the World Heritage inscription: The Troodos mountain region of Cyprus contains one of the largest groups of churches and monasteries of the former Byzantine Empire. The ten monuments included on the World Heritage List, all richly decorated with murals, provide an overview of Byzantine and post-Byzantine painting in Cyprus and bear testimony to the …
From the World Heritage inscription: Because of their great antiquity, and because they are closely and directly related to the cult and legend of Aphrodite (Venus), who became the ideal of beauty and love, inspiring writers, poets, and artists throughout human history, Paphos is of outstanding universal value. Pre-Hellenic fertility deities were worshipped in Cyprus …
From the World Heritage inscription: Valletta is pre-eminently an ideal creation of the late Renaissance with its uniform urban plan, inspired by neo-Platonic principles, its fortified and bastioned walls modeled around the natural site, and the voluntary implantation of great monuments in well-chosen locations. The capital of Malta is one of the rare urban inhabited …
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 …
From the World Heritage inscription: Muskauer Park was the forerunner for new approaches to landscape design in cities, and influenced the development of landscape architecture as a discipline. The site is the core zone of an extensive landscape park laid out by a leading European personality of the mid-19th century, Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, around …
From the World Heritage inscription: Auschwitz-Birkenau was the principal and most notorious of the six concentration and extermination camps established by Nazi Germany to implement its Final Solution policy which had as its aim the mass murder of the Jewish people in Europe. Built in Poland under Nazi German occupation initially as a concentration camp …
From the World Heritage inscription: In the history of military architecture, the Fortress of Finland (Suomenlinna) is an outstanding example representative both of the general fortification principles of the period and of its specific characteristics. In 1747, when Finland was part of the Swedish realm, the Diet in Stockholm decided to build a fortress to …