A joint bid to add ancient pile dwellings in the alpine region to the Unesco list of World Heritage Sites has advanced to the next stage.
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The International Council on Monuments and Sites (Icomos) has recommended registering the bid on the World Heritage list.
The bid will now be considered by Unesco’s World Heritage at its annual meeting in June.
“With this positive response, the candidacy has been set in motion,” the Federal Culture Office said on Monday.
Overall there are about 1,000 known sites of pile dwellings in the alpine region, including Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia and Switzerland.
Switzerland is leading the bid, submitted by six countries, to register more than 150 stilt houses dating back to between 5,000 and 800 BC.The aim of the campaign is to ensure that the remains are not destroyed in the coming few decades through draining of lake shores or marshes.
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UNESCO world heritage – a success story
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The answer is that these places are all on Unesco’s list of World Heritage Sites, and are thus considered to have “outstanding value to humanity”. The United Nations cultural body has brought countries together to protect the wonders of the world for future generations. Since the world heritage label’s inception in 1972, the United Nations…
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Six countries are submitting a joint application to register more than 150 such stilt houses dating back to between 5,000 and 800 BC. The United Nations culture organisation is due to decide on the project in 2011. “The project is unique for a period so far back in history,” said Claude Frey, president of Palafittes,…
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The find in the Silvretta mountains near the Austrian border gives scientists the oldest architectural proof that early Iron Age shepherds spent summers living among the rich alpine grasses, tending to herds and using milk to make cheese, in a way much like farmers today. “It is perhaps a bit of a cliché for Switzerland,…
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Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Italy and France have successfully campaigned to have 111 of the most important lakeside pile dwellings in the Alps designated World Heritage sites. Of these, 56 are in Switzerland.
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