Two new sites have been added this year to the already substantial list of Italy’s Unesco World Heritage sites (at 53, the country with the most Unesco sites in the world): the “Venetian Works of Defense between 16th and 17th centuries” and the “Primeval Beech Forests of Europe,” whose area has been extended to include sites in Italy. The Unesco commission gathered on July 7.
The first site includes a number of defense works in Italy, Croatia and Montenegro, which, as Unesco explains, were “necessary to support the expansion and authority of the Serenissima.” These defense systems, which span more than 1,000 kilometers between Lombardy and the eastern Adriatic Coast, protected Venice from other European powers as well as sea routes and ports in the Adriatic Sea.
Here’s where you can see the “Venetian Works of Defense between 16th and 17th centuries” site (Venice and beyond):
Venice – Darsena Vecchia, Fort of Sant’Andrea, the Porta Nuova tower, Gaggiandre, in the Arsenal; the Poveglia octagon;
Bergamo – the walls of the ‘Città Alta’;
Peschiera del Garda (Verona) – in the southern part of Lake Garda, this small lake town still carries significant traces of its military past as an important defense post for the valley of the Adige and the route to Austria;
Palmanova (Udine) – one of the best preserved examples of military architecture from the Renaissance, Palmanova was built in 1593 to defend the eastern border.
The second Italian site entering the UNESCO list is a transboundary extension of a previous site, the “Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and the Ancient Beech Forests of Germany,” a collection of primordial beech forests, which spread “over a short period of a few thousand years in a process that is still ongoing.”
In Italy, here’s where you can admire these beech forests:
Inside the National Park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise, five beautiful beech forest clusters have been identified; in a pristine environment, they house the oldest beech trees of the northern hemisphere. It is the first Unesco site in Abruzzo.
Inside the National Park of the Pollino, the beech forest of Cozzo Ferriero (Potenza), better visited with an expert guide as the trail is scarcely maintained and signposted;
Foresta Umbra, in the province of Foggia, easily reachable even by car on the internal road that traverses the Gargano promontory;
Sasso Fratino inside the National Park of the Foreste Casentinesi, Monte Falterona and Campigna, which contains the largest nucleus of primeval beech trees, some 500 years old, of the Northern Apennines. Try the enchanting Nature Trail, between Badia Prataglia and the Hermitage of Camaldoli;
Monte Cimino (Viterbo), where the trees are especially high;
Monte Raschio (Rome), inside the Regional Park of Bracciano and Martignano, where you can take an easy walk.
