France-Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps

This serial property of 111 small individual sites encompasses the remains of prehistoric pile-dwelling (or stilt house) settlements in and around the Alps built from around 5000 to 500 B.C. on the edges of lakes, rivers or wetlands. Excavations, only conducted in some of the sites, have yielded evidence that provides insight into life in prehistoric times during the Neolithic and Bronze Age in Alpine Europe and the way communities interacted with their environment. Fifty-six of the sites are located in Switzerland. The settlements are a unique group of exceptionally well-preserved and culturally rich archaeological sites, which constitute one of the most important sources for the study of early agrarian societies in the region.

France-Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin

Remarkable as a landscape shaped over three centuries of coal extraction from the 1700s to the 1900s, the site consists of 109 separate components over 120,000 ha. It features mining pits (the oldest of which dates from 1850) and lift infrastructure, slag heaps (some of which cover 90 ha and exceed 140 m in height), coal transport infrastructure, railway stations, workers’ estates and mining villages including social habitat, schools, religious buildings, health and community facilities, company premises, owners and managers’ houses, town halls and more. The site bears testimony to the quest to create model workers’ cities from the mid 19th century to the 1960s and further illustrates a significant period in the history of industrial Europe. It documents the living conditions of workers and the solidarity to which it gave rise.

France - Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc, known as Grotte Chauvet-Pont d’Arc, Ardèche

Located in a limestone plateau of the Ardèche River in southern France, the property contains the earliest-known and best-preserved figurative drawings in the world, dating back as early as the Aurignacian period (30,000–32,000 BP), making it an exceptional testimony of prehistoric art. The cave was closed off by a rock fall approximately 20,000 years BP and remained sealed until its discovery in 1994, which helped to keep it in pristine condition. Over 1,000 images have so far been inventoried on its walls, combining a variety of anthropomorphic and animal motifs. Of exceptional aesthetic quality, they demonstrate a range of techniques including the skilful use of shading, combinations of paint and engraving, anatomical precision, three-dimensionality and movement. They include several dangerous animal species difficult to observe at that time, such as mammoth, bear, cave lion, rhino, bison and auroch, as well as 4,000 inventoried remains of prehistoric fauna and a variety of human footprints.

France-The Climats, terroirs of Burgundy

The climates are precisely delimited vineyard parcels on the slopes of the Côte de Nuits and the Côte de Beaune south of the city of Dijon. They differ from one another due to specific natural conditions (geology and exposure) as well as vine types and have been shaped by human cultivation. Over time they came to be recognized by the wine they produce. This cultural landscape consists of two parts. Firstly, the vineyards and associated production units including villages and the town of Beaune, which together represent the commercial dimension of the production system. The second part includes the historic centre of Dijon, which embodies the political regulatory impetus that gave birth to the climats system. The site is an outstanding example of grape cultivation and wine production developed since the High Middle Ages

France - The Climats, terroirs of Burgundy

The climates are precisely delimited vineyard parcels on the slopes of the Côte de Nuits and the Côte de Beaune south of the city of Dijon. They differ from one another due to specific natural conditions (geology and exposure) as well as vine types and have been shaped by human cultivation. Over time they came to be recognized by the wine they produce. This cultural landscape consists of two parts. Firstly, the vineyards and associated production units including villages and the town of Beaune, which together represent the commercial dimension of the production system. The second part includes the historic centre of Dijon, which embodies the political regulatory impetus that gave birth to the climatssystem. The site is an outstanding example of grape cultivation and wine production developed since the High Middle Ages.

France - Pitons, cirques and remparts of Reunion Island

The Pitons, cirques and remparts of Reunion Island site coincides with the core zone of La Réunion National Park. The property covers more than 100,000 ha or 40 % of La Réunion, an island comprising two adjoining volcanic massifs located in the south-west of the Indian Ocean. Dominated by two towering volcanic peaks, massive walls and three cliff-rimmed cirques, the property includes a great variety of rugged terrain and impressive escarpments, forested gorges and basins creating a visually striking landscape. It is the natural habitat for a wide diversity of plants, presenting a high level of endemism. There are subtropical rainforests, cloud forests and heaths creating a remarkable and visually appealing mosaic of ecosystems and landscape features.

FranceNew Caledonia - Lagoons of New Caledonia: Reef Diversity and Associated Ecosystems

This serial site comprises six marine clusters that represent the main diversity of coral reefs and associated ecosystems in the French Pacific Ocean archipelago of New Caledonia and one of the three most extensive reef systems in the world. These Lagoons are of exceptional natural beauty. They feature an exceptional diversity of coral and fish species and a continuum of habitats from mangroves to seagrasses with the world’s most diverse concentration of reef structures. The Lagoons of New Caledonia display intact ecosystems, with healthy populations of large predators, and a great number and diversity of big fish. They provide habitat to a number of emblematic or threatened marine species such as turtles, whales or dugongs whose population here is the third largest in the world.

UNESCO Memory of the World - France/Bayeux Tapestry

Memory of the World

The Bayeux Tapestry is actually an embroidery. 
This work of art is the first manuscript of the collections held at the municipal library of the city of Bayeux, located in Normandy, France. 

The Tapestry is a historical account, but also an essential source of information on the way of life in the Middle Ages in general, and the 11th century in particular: it is therefore a documentary record which employs particular narrative techniques and makes use of symbolism, as do many literary and artistic works of the Romanesque period. It is a unique work: there is no other similar document to compare it with. It retains to this day an element of mystery, and several questions have not yet been fully answered. 

The truly exceptional character of the Tapestry also lies in its size: it is 68.80 metres long, 50 centimetres high, and weighs close to 350 kilograms (original cloth and lining). For this reason, it needs to be exhibited in a very specific way.

France - From the Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bains to the Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans, the Production of Open-pan Salt

The Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans, near Besançon, was built by Claude Nicolas Ledoux. Its construction, begun in 1775 during the reign of Louis XVI, was the first major achievement of industrial architecture, reflecting the ideal of progress of the Enlightenment. The vast, semicircular complex was designed to permit a rational and hierarchical organization of work and was to have been followed by the building of an ideal city, a project that was never realized.

The Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bains was active for at least 1200 years until stopping activity in 1962. From 1780 to 1895, its salt water travelled through 21 km of wood pipes to the Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans. It was built near the immense Chaux Forest to ensure its supply of wood for fuel. The Saltworks of Salins shelters an underground gallery from the 13^th century including a hydraulic pump from the 19^th century that still functions. The boiler house demonstrates the difficulty of the saltworkers’ labour to collect the “White Gold”.

France - Episcopal City of Albi

On the banks of the Tarn river in south-west France, the old city of Albi reflects the culmination of a medieval architectural and urban ensemble. Today the Old Bridge (Pont-Vieux), the Saint-Salvi quarter and its church are testimony to its initial development (10th -11th centuries). Following the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathar heretics (13th century) it became a powerful episcopal city. Built in a unique southern French Gothic style from local brick in characteristic red and orange colours, the lofty fortified Cathedral (late 13th century) dominates the city, demonstrating the power regained by the Roman Catholic clergy. Alongside the Cathedral is the vast bishop’s Palais de la Berbie, overlooking the river and surrounded by residential quarters that date back to the Middle Ages. The Episcopal City of Albi forms a coherent and homogeneous ensemble of monuments and quarters that has remained largely unchanged over the centuries.

France - The Causses and the Cévennes, Mediterranean agro-pastoral Cultural Landscape

This 302,319 ha property, in the southern part of central France, is a mountain landscape interspersed by deep valleys that is representative of the relationship between agro-pastoral systems and their biophysical environment, notably through drailles or drove roads. Villages and substantial stone farmhouses on deep terraces of the Causses reflect the organization of large abbeys from the 11th century. Mont Lozère, inside the property, is one of the last places where summer transhumance is still practiced in the traditional way, using the drailles.

le Chateau de Champs (Cévennes)

France - Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France

Santiago de Compostela was the supreme goal for countless thousands of pious pilgrims who converged there from all over Europe throughout the Middle Ages. To reach Spain pilgrims had to pass through France, and the group of important historical monuments included in this inscription marks out the four routes by which they did so.

France - The Loire Valley between Sully-sur-Loire and Chalonnes

The Loire Valley is an outstanding cultural landscape of great beauty, containing historic towns and villages, great architectural monuments (the châteaux), and cultivated lands formed by many centuries of interaction between their population and the physical environment, primarily the river Loire itself.

 Amboise

Azay -le-Rideau

Blois

Chambord

Chaumont

Looking for 

• • Angers, Azay-le-Ferron, Beauregard, Bouges,Bourdaisiere, Breze, Brissac, Chateaudun, Clos Luce - De Vinci, Fourgeres-sur-Bievre, Gue-Pean,Langeais, Le Grand Pressigny, Loches, Lude, Meung sur Loire, Montbazon, Montpoupon, Montresor, Montreuil Bellay, Montsoreau, Oiron, Rivau,Serrant,Valencay,

France - The Loire Valley between Sully-sur-Loire and Chalonnes - 2

Chenonceau

Cheverny

Chinon  

Saumur

Sully sur Loire

Villandry

French Belfries

Nord Pas de Calai
Nord

Pas-de-Calais

France - Belfries of Belgium and France

Twenty-three belfries in the north of France and the belfry of Gembloux in Belgium were inscribed as a group, an extension to the 32 Belgian belfries inscribed in 1999 as Belfries of Flanders and Wallonia. Built between the 11th and 17th centuries, they showcase the Roman, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles of architecture. They are highly significant tokens of the winning of civil liberties. While Italian, German and English towns mainly opted to build town halls, in part of north-western Europe, greater emphasis was placed on building belfries. Compared with the keep (symbol of the seigneurs) and the bell-tower (symbol of the Church), the belfry, the third tower in the urban landscape, symbolizes the power of the aldermen. Over the centuries, they came to represent the influence and wealth of the towns.

Looking for those Belfries 

Nord Pas de Calais

Nord - Bailleul, Bergues, Cambrai, Dunkirk (Belfry of the St. Eligius Church), Gravelines, Loos

Pas-de-Calai - Aire-sur-la-Lys, Arras, Béthune, Hesdin

Picardy

Somme - Abbeville, Amiens, Doullens, Lucheux, Rue, Saint-Riquier

France - Vézelay, Church and Hill

Shortly after its foundation in the 9th century, the Benedictine abbey of Vézelay acquired the relics of St Mary Magdalene and since then it has been an important place of pilgrimage. St Bernard preached the Second Crusade there in 1146 and Richard the Lion-Hearted and Philip II Augustus met there to leave for the Third Crusade in 1190. With its sculpted capitals and portal, the Madeleine of Vézelay – a 12th-century monastic church – is a masterpiece of Burgundian Romanesque art and architecture.

France - Fortifications of Vauban

Fortifications of Vauban consists of 12 groups of fortified buildings and sites along the western, northern and eastern borders of France. They represent the finest examples of the work of Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707), a military engineer of King Louis XIV. The serial property includes towns built from scratch by Vauban, citadels, urban bastion walls and bastion towers. There are also mountain forts, sea forts, a mountain battery and two mountain communication structures. This property is inscribed as bearing witness to the peak of classic fortifications, typical of western military architecture. Vauban also played a major role in the history of fortification in Europe and on other continents until the mid-19th century.

La tour Dorée de Camaret-sur-Mer

La citadelle, l’enceinte urbaine et le fort Griffon de Besançon

Neuf-Brisach

Saint Martin - de-Re

La place forte de Longwy

• Looking for: La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de Blaye/Cussac-Fort-Médoc, L’enceinte urbaine, les forts des Salettes, des Trois-Tête, du Randoouillet et Dauphin, la communication Y et le pont d’Asfeld de Briançon, La place forte de Mont-Dauphin, L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis, Les tours-observatoires de Tatihou et de la Hougue , L’enceinte, le fort et la Cova Bastera de Villefranche-de-Conflent,