UNESCO World Heritage in Hungary
Hungary currently has 8 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, 7 in the cultural and one in the natural category .
Budapest the Buda Castle Quarter, Banks of the Danube
Cut in two by the Danube, with hills and valleys on one side (Buda side), and plains on the other (Pest side), connected with a series of graceful bridges spanning the river, Budapest offers a unique panorama.
The characteristically Baroque façades of Buda Castle Quarter have retained a distinctly medieval atmosphere, while the Pest side has kept a large extent of its strikingly uniform historicist and art nouveau architecture – enriched with public buildings of outstanding importance – fitted into a city structure of grand boulevards and avenues, including Andrássy Avenue and its surroundings as a key feature.
Old Village of Hollókő and its surroundings
Hollókő hides among the undulations of the Cserhát hills about 100 km from in the north of Budapest in a picturesque setting, where tradition lives on.
The history of the village goes back to the 13th century, when after the Mongol invasion the castle was built on Szár Hill. The village consists of 55 family houses and a church, a folk architecture complex which is reminiscent of the beginning of the 20th century. The historic village architecture, the shapes and use of materials of traditional Palóc buildings form a harmonic unity with the natural landscape.
Caves of Aggtelek Karst and Slovak Karst
The Aggtelek National Park in north-eastern Hungary was established in 1985 primarily to protect inorganic natural treasures, surface formations and caves. Seventy-five percent of it is covered with deciduous forest.
The clearings scattered about like a mosaic, the areas of rock and the hillsides dotted with rocky outcrops provide a habitat for rare plants, a rich insect world and more than 220 species of local birds. Here in the Aggtelek and Slovakian Karst, together forming a geological and geographical unit, Central Europe’s largest cave system was formed.
Millenary Benedictine Abbey of Pannonhalma and its Natural Environment
The history of the abbey, built on the holy mount of the Roman province of Pannonia (Mons Sacer Pannonia), is as old as the history of Hungary itself. The pagan Hungarian tribes arrived in the Carpathian Basin from the east in c. 896.
Their leader Géza and his son, the State founder Stephen I, recognised that the Hungarian people could only survive if they created a solid, feudal state and adopted Christianity. The first Benedictine monks settled here in 996. They went on to convert the Hungarians, to found the country’s first school and, in 1055, to write the first document in Hungarian.
It was to preserve and protect the most outstanding of these values that the UNESCO created the World Heritage Committee and accepted the Agreement regarding the protection of the world’s cultural and natural heritage, to which 175 countries have attached themselves. In 2005, 812 World Heritage sites in the territories of 137 states were added to the list. The original two categories have been joined by a third, that of cultural region. Here can be found treasures where the natural and man-made environments are tightly interdependent and mutually worthy of preservation.
Hortobágy National Park the Puszta
Hortobágy is the largest continuous natural grassland in Europe, which means that it was not formed as a result of deforestation or river control. The first Hungarian national park (established in 1973), it is the country’s largest protected area (82 thousand hectares).
A significant part of it is Biosphere Reserve and a quarter of its area enjoys international protection under the Ramsar Convention on the conservation of wetlands. Hortobágy has outstanding natural features, maintaining great biological diversity in respect of species and habitats
Early Christian Necropolis of Pécs
This is one of the most significant provincial cemeteries. On the site of the modern city of Pécs, the Ancient Romans had founded Sopianae in the 2nd century AD, and by the 4th century it had grown into a flourishing provincial seat and an important center of Christianity.
The already explored archaeological findings offer a uniquely varied and complex illustration of the early Christian burial architecture and art of the northern and western provinces of the Roman Empire, the roots of a civilization surviving to the present day.
Fertő / Neusiedlersee Cultural Landscape
Lake Fertő is situated on the territory of Austria and Hungary, and it was nominated jointly by the two countries for inclusion on the World Heritage list.
Part of the Fertő-Hanság National Park, in 1979 it was declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO, and it is regarded as one of the internationally significant natural water areas of Europe. It is the most western example of the Eurasian steppe lakes, and at the same time it is Europe’s largest salt-water lake.
Tokaj Wine Region Historic Cultural Landscape
The name of Tokaj is identified with wine all over the world. In this wine region situated in the north-east part of Hungary they found the fossil of the leaf of an ancient vine type, which is regarded as the common ancestor of the present vine varieties.
So it can be said that the vine is truly indigenous and natural to Tokaj. The intricate pattern of vineyards, farms, villages and small towns, with their historic networks of deep wine cellars, illustrates every facet of the production of the famous Tokaj wines, the quality and management of which have been strictly regulated for nearly three centuries.
A Tentative List is an inventory of those properties which each State Party intends to consider for nomination.
- Le Château-fort médiéval d’Esztergom (1993)
- The Tihany Peninsula (1993)
- Caves of the Buda Thermal Karst System (1993)
- Mediaeval Royal Seat and Parkland at Visegrád (2000)
- System of Fortifications at the Confluence of the Rivers Danube and Váh in Komárno – Komárom (2007)
- The Network of Rural Heritage Buildings in Hungary (2000)
- State Stud-Farm Estate of Mezöhegyes (2000)
- The Wooden Churches of the Northern Part of the Carpathian Basin (2000)
- The Ipolytartnóc Fossils (2000)
- Ödön Lechner’s independent pre-modern architecture (2008)
- Frontiers of the Roman Empire – Ripa Pannonica in Hungary (2009)
- Busó festivities at Mohács: masked end-of-winter carnival custom (2009)