Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations. Our cultural and natural heritage are both irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) seeks to encourage the identification, protection, and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity. This is embodied in an international treaty called the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted by UNESCO in 1972.
The Great Spa Towns of Europe is a World Heritage Site comprising 11 famous historic spa towns and cities in seven countries. Together, they make one “property” inscribed on the World Heritage List on 24 July 2021 as a transnational series. The Great Spas, in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom represent a unique cultural phenomenon which reached its height in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as a particular urban type and form. As a World Heritage Site, it has been given global recognition as a phenomenon which helped shape Europe.
€1,00 – Baden-Baden, Germany
Baden-Baden, known as the summer capital of Europe, was patronized by the ruling and cultural elite of nineteenth-century continental Europe. Situated on the western edge of the Black Forest, it became one of Europe’s largest and most fashionable spas with an unbroken tradition of using mineral water for healing from antiquity to the present. Reflected by the separate spa quarter, newly developed across the River Oos from the old town, it was here, in the Kurhaus and Casino, that Baden-Baden acquired a worldwide reputation as the supreme example of the German gaming spa. It was also a place of inspiration for major artists and works of universal significance. Today, balneological treatments and bathing continue with great popularity in both historic and new thermal establishments, while an outstanding tradition of music and theatre is vibrantly sustained.
€1,80 – Baden bei Wien, Austria
Baden bei Wien is just 30 kilometers from Vienna, the historic seat of one of the world’s greatest imperial dynasties – the Habsburgs. Baden was one of their favorite summer resorts, known as a spa of emperors and a magnet for high-level politics. The town combines the classicist architecture of the beginning of the nineteenth century with the architecture and infrastructures of the turn of the twentieth century, when Baden became a world class spa resort. The spa district is centered on the spa garden that is host to the Kurhaus, Trinkhalle, Sommerarena, and music pavilion. The therapeutic and recreational spa landscape extends into a scenic terrain of hills and a valley that contain a distinguished belt of villas and parks. Musical heritage of outstanding universal significance is linked to one of the favorite workplaces of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Johann Strauss.
