Historic center of Vienna

Historic center of Vienna
UNESCO world heritage
	Heroes' Square with an equestrian statue (behind it the Natural History Museum)
National territory:	Austria
Type:	Culture
Criteria :	ii, iv, vi
Surface:	371 ha
Reference No .:	1033
UNESCO region :	Europe and North America
	History of enrollment
Enrollment:	2001 (session 25)
Red list :	2017

The historic center of Vienna is one of two UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the Austrian capital Vienna , along with the Schönbrunn Palace and Gardens . The area, which consists of a core and an outer zone, covers 8.33 km². The appointment as UNESCO World Heritage took place in 2001. A part of the historical center of Vienna, primarily the 1st District Inner City and the adjacent ring road, as protected under the Hague Convention cultural registers (Ensemble Inner City) .

The World Heritage status has been endangered since 2016 due to a planned construction project, and in 2017 the site was entered on the Red List of World Heritage in Danger.

area

Red: core zone - orange: outer zone

Core zone

The self-contained core zone of the world cultural heritage covers 371 hectares with around 1,600 objects. The greater part is occupied by the 1st district of the inner city with the exception of the bank zone on the Danube Canal . In the 3rd district of Landstraße , the Belvedere and the city park belong to the core zone. In the 4th district of Wieden , the Karlsplatz with the Karlskirche , in the 7th district of Neubau, the MuseumsQuartier and the Volkstheater are to be mentioned. Finally, a section of the 9th district of Alsergrund , in which the Votive Church is located, belongs to the core zone.

Outside zone

The core zone of the world heritage site is surrounded by an outer zone in a ring. This is 462 hectares and includes around 2950 properties. In the municipal districts of Alsergrund, Brigittenau , Innere Stadt, Landstraße and Leopoldstadt , both banks of the Danube Canal between the Friedensbrücke in the north and Ulrichgasse are part of the outer zone. At Alsergrund, those sections of the Rossau district and the east of the Alservorstadt district also belong to the outer zone that are not already part of the core zone. The same applies to a larger area in the west of the highway. In the 4th district of Wieden, a large part of the district area is included, while in the 5th district of Margareten only a narrow strip of Vienna is included in the outer zone. In the 6th district of Mariahilf , the eastern districts of Laimgrube and Windmühle as well as the east of the Mariahilf district belong to the outer zone. There are also areas to the east of the 7th district of Neubau and the 8th district of Josefstadt .

description

View from St. Stephen's Cathedral towards Kärntner Strasse

In its recommendation to include the historic center of Vienna in the World Heritage list, the International Council on Monuments and Sites emphasized three aspects in particular:

In terms of urban planning and architecture, the historical center of Vienna is an outstanding testimony to the continuous exchange of values in the second millennium.
The Middle Ages , the Baroque and the Wilhelminian Period as key epochs of the cultural and political development of Europe can be found in an extraordinary way in the architecture.

Vienna has been the European capital of music since the 16th century.

History as a world heritage site

The historical center of Vienna was chronologically the seventh of nine World Heritage sites in Austria . It was added to the World Heritage List on December 13, 2001 at the same time as the Fertő / Neusiedler See cultural landscape .

The World Heritage Committee repeatedly criticized the planned construction of a high-rise at Wien Mitte train station , which threatened to impair the visual integrity of the historic city and was ultimately not built. In 2008 the World Heritage Committee succeeded in reducing the height of a planned building at Vienna Central Station , as it could have been seen from the Belvederes Palace Park. On July 6, 2017, the committee put the historic center on the Red List of World Heritage in Danger . The decisive factor was a high-rise project on Heumarkt that was decided by the local council the month before . Even after submitting Austria's annual report on the status of implementation of the requirements of the World Heritage Committee (Desired State of Conservation Report), UNESCO decided in 2019, following the recommendation of the International Council for the Preservation of Monuments, ICOMOS , that the World Heritage site should remain on the Red List. The status as world heritage was not yet revoked, instead Austria was granted a two-year moratorium to develop measures to protect the world heritage.