Sunday 11 February 2024

The Historic Centre of Odesa

This was my first new UNESCO of the year. Unfortunately it is a place that is at war. I hope this is the year this war ends.


Odesa
This postcard was sent by Maryna

The Historic Center of Odesa, part of the Black Sea port city developed on the site of Khadzhybei, is a densely built-up area, planned according to classicism canons, characterized by two- to four-storey buildings and wide perpendicular streets lined with trees. Historic buildings reflect the rapid economic development of the city in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The site includes theatres, bridges, monuments, religious buildings, schools, private palaces and tenement houses, clubs, hotels, banks, shopping centres, warehouses, stock exchanges and other public and administrative buildings designed by architects and engineers, mostly from Italy in the early years, but also of other nationalities. Eclecticism is the dominant feature of the historic city centre’s architecture. The site bears witness to the city’s highly diverse ethnic and religious communities, representing an outstanding example of intercultural exchanges and the growth of multicultural and multi-ethnic Eastern European cities of the 19th century. - in: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1703/

Thursday 18 January 2024

Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape

New year, hope to receive new postcards! This was the last that I received last year.


Richtersveld
This postcard was sent from India by Sriram

The 160,000 ha Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape of dramatic mountainous desert in north-western South Africa constitutes a cultural landscape communally owned and managed. This site sustains the semi-nomadic pastoral livelihood of the Nama people, reflecting seasonal patterns that may have persisted for as much as two millennia in southern Africa. It is the only area where the Nama still construct portable rush-mat houses (haru om ) and includes seasonal migrations and grazing grounds, together with stock posts. The pastoralists collect medicinal and other plants and have a strong oral tradition associated with different places and attributes of the landscape. - in: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1265/

Sunday 12 November 2023

Stećci Medieval Tombstone Graveyards

These medieval tombstones are scattered across Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the border parts of CroatiaMontenegro and Serbia


Stećci Tombstones in Croatia

This serial property combines 28 sites, located in Bosnia and Herzegovina, western Serbia, western Montenegro and central and southern Croatia, representing these cemeteries and regionally distinctive medieval tombstones, or stećci. 

Stećci Tombstones in Croatia

The cemeteries, which date from the 12th to 16th centuries CE, are laid out in rows, as was the common custom in Europe from the Middle Ages. 

Stećci Tombstones in Serbia


The stećci are mostly carved from limestone. They feature a wide range of decorative motifs and inscriptions that represent iconographic continuities within medieval Europe as well as locally distinctive traditions. - in: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1504/

I'm still missing a postcard from Bosnia and Herzegovina.


Saturday 11 November 2023

Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn

This palace and its gardens are the kind of place that makes us travel in time!

Schönbrunn Palace
 This postcard was given to me by my cousin Andreia

Schönbrunn Palace (GermanSchloss Schönbrunn) is a former imperial summer residence located in ViennaAustria. The 1,441-room Baroque palace is one of the most important architectural, cultural and historical monuments in the country. Since the mid-1950s it has been a major tourist attraction. 

Schönbrunn Palace
This postcard was sent by Christian 

The history of the palace and its vast gardens spans over 300 years, reflecting the changing tastes, interests, and aspirations of successive Habsburg monarchs. - in: wikipedia


Schönbrunn Palace and the Gloriette
 This postcard was sent by Danubia

The largest and probably most well-known gloriette is in the Schönbrunn Palace Garden in Vienna. Built in 1775 as the last building constructed in the garden according to the plans of Austrian imperial architect Johann Ferdinand Hetzendorf von Hohenberg as a "temple of renown" to serve as both a focal point and a lookout point for the garden, it was used as a dining hall and festival hall as well as a breakfast room for emperor Franz Joseph I. The dining hall, which was used up until the end of the monarchy, today has a café in it, and on the roof an observation platform overlooks Vienna. The Gloriette's decorative sculptures were made by the famous Salzburg sculptorJohann Baptist von Hagenauer. The Gloriette was destroyed in the Second World War, but had already been restored by 1947, and was restored again in 1995 - in: wikipedia

Schönbrunn Palace and Empress Elisabeth portrait
This postcard was sent by Friedrich

The Sisi Museum in the Vienna Hofburg, Schönbrunn Palace and the Imperial Furniture Collection provide authentic insights into the life and personality of this famous monarch.
In 2004 the Sisi Museum opened in a section of the Imperial Apartments once occupied by the empress. With more than 300 personal objects on display, the exhibition avoids the usual clichés, presenting Elisabeth’s true personality in a sensitive exploration of the empress’s life and fate. Elisabeth’s verse is used to illustrate her emotional states of mind at each stage of her life, from her carefree girlhood to the restless, aloof and melancholic woman she later became. - in: http://www.schoenbrunn.at/en/nc/services/press-information/archive/press-information-2011/press-information-detail-2011/artikel/auf-den-spuren-von-kaiserin-elisabeth-in-wien-1.html

Independence Hall

Says Kate, the sender of this first postcard, that this building is in the one hundred-dollar bills, but she learnt from the internet because she doesn't see them that often. How I understand her! 

Independence Hall
This postcard was sent by Kate

The Declaration of Independence was adopted and the Constitution of the United States of America framed in this fine early 18th-century building in Philadelphia. These events, which took place respectively in 1776 and 1787, were conceived in a national context, but the universal principles of freedom and democracy set forth in these two documents have had a profound impact on lawmakers and political thinkers around the world. They became the models for similar charters of other nations, and may be considered to have heralded the modern era of government. Independence Hall was designed by attorney Andrew Hamilton in collaboration with master builder Edmund Woolley to house the Assembly of the Commonwealth (colony) of Pennsylvania. Begun in 1732 and finished in 1753, it is a dignified brick structure with a wooden steeple that once held the Liberty Bell. 


Independence Hall
This postcard was sent by Erin

The building has undergone many restorations, notably by architect John Haviland in the 1830s and under the direction of the National Park Service beginning in the 1950s, returning it to its appearance during the years when the new country’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution were debated and signed. In the Assembly Room, the momentous events that occurred there are explained and their international impact as well as the spread of democracy are discussed. - in: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/78


Philadelphia
This postcard was sent by Kelly

Old City is a historic neighborhood in Center City, Philadelphia, in the area near the Delaware River where William Penn and the Quakers first settled. To tourists, it is best known as the site of Independence Hall and its encompassing Independence National Historical ParkElfreth's AlleyCarpenters' Hall, the Betsy Ross House, and many of Philadelphia's other historic sites. - in: wikipedia


Independence Hall and George Washington Statue
This postcard was sent by Olga

Naumburg Cathedral

The Naumburg Cathedral is remarkable specially for the life-sized sculptures situated in the western choir


Naumburg Cathedral
This postcard was sent by Ina

Naumburg Cathedral (GermanNaumburger Dom St. Peter und St. Paul), located in Naumburg, Germany, is the former cathedral of the Bishopric of Naumburg-Zeitz. The church building, most of which dates back to the 13th century, is a renowned landmark of the German late Romanesque. The west choir with the famous donor portrait statues of the twelve cathedral founders (Stifterfiguren) and the Lettner, works of the Naumburg Master, is one of the most significant early Gothic monuments. - in: wikipedia

Margrave Ekkehard II and Uta
This postcard was sent by Doris

The Stifterfiguren (donor figures) by the artist called Naumburger Meister (Master of Naumburg) are probably the best-known work of art in the cathedral and are often referred to as the best-known work of early Gothic sculpture in Germany. Situated in the western choir, the twelve life-sized sculptures (eight men and four women) show nobles who were among the founders of the cathedral. - in: wikipedia

Naumburg Cathedral
This postcard was sent by Anton

Tuesday 7 November 2023

Prehistoric Sites of Talayotic Menorca

The Talayotic Culture is the name used to describe the society that existed in Menorca and Mallorca during the Iron AgeIts name is derived from the talaiots, which are the most abundant and emblematic structures from the prehistoric period of the Balearic Islands.


Prehistoric Sites of Talayotic Menorca
This postcard was sent by Jordi

Located on the island of Menorca in the western Mediterranean Sea, these archaeological sites are situated in agro-pastoral landscapes. A testimony to the occupation of the island by prehistoric communities, these sites display a diversity of prehistoric settlements and burial places. The materials, forms and locations of structures dating from the Bronze Age (1600 BCE) to the Late Iron Age (123 BCE) show the evolution of a “cyclopean” architecture built with very large blocks of stone. Astronomical orientations and visual interconnections between prehistoric structures indicate networks with possible cosmological meanings. - in: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1528