Intangible culture with Related Tags
Heritage with Related Tags
Painted Churches in the Troodos Region
The area features one of the largest complexes of churches and monasteries in the pre-Byzantine Empire. The complex consists of 10 World Heritage-listed monuments, all richly decorated with frescoes that showcase Byzantine and post-Byzantine painting in Cyprus. The complex includes small churches, whose rustic architecture contrasts with their elaborate decoration, and monasteries such as the Monastery of St. John Lampadistis.
Padua’s fourteenth-century fresco cycles
The site, which consists of eight religious and secular complexes located within the historic walls of Padua, houses a series of frescoes created between 1302 and 1397 by different artists for different types of patrons and in different types of buildings. Despite this, these frescoes maintain a unity of style and content. They include Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel frescoes, which are considered to mark the beginning of a revolutionary development in the history of fresco painting, as well as frescoes by other different artists, namely Guariento di Arpo, Giusto de' Menabuoi, Altichiero da Zevio, Jacopo Avanzi and Jacopo da Verona. As a whole, these frescoes show how, over the course of a century, the art of fresco painting developed along new creative impulses and understandings of spatial representation.
Complex of Koguryo Tombs
The site includes several group tombs and individual tombs, totaling about 30 individual tombs, dating from the late Goguryeo Kingdom. The Goguryeo Kingdom was one of the most powerful kingdoms in what is now northeastern China and half of the Korean Peninsula, dating from the 3rd century BC to the 7th century AD. Many of these tombs have exquisite wall paintings, which are almost the only remains of this culture. Of the more than 10,000 Goguryeo tombs discovered in China and Korea to date, only about 90 have wall paintings. Almost half of these tombs are located at this site, and they are believed to have been built to bury the king, members of the royal family and nobles. The wall paintings provide unique testimony to daily life during this period.
Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak
The tomb was discovered in 1944 and dates back to the Hellenistic period at the end of the 4th century BC. It is part of a large Thracian necropolis near Theutopolis, the capital of the Thracian King Theutes III. The domed tomb has a narrow corridor and a circular chamber, both decorated with frescoes representing Thracian funeral rites and culture. The paintings are the best-preserved masterpieces of Hellenistic art in Bulgaria.
Neolithic Site of Çatalhöyük
The site on the Southern Anatolian Plateau covers an area of 37 hectares and consists of two hills. The higher, eastern mound contains 18 layers of Neolithic remains dating between 7400 and 6200 BC, including murals, reliefs, sculptures and other symbolic and artistic features. Together, they bear witness to the evolution of civilization. As humans adapted to settled life, social organization and cultural practices changed. The western mound shows the evolution of cultural practices during the Chalcolithic period, between 6200 and 5200 BC. Çatalhöyük provides important evidence of the transition from a settled village to an urban agglomeration, which remained in the same location for more than 2,000 years. It is characterized by a unique street-less settlement, where houses are clustered back-to-back with rooftops leading to the buildings.
Early Christian Necropolis of Pécs (Sopianae)
In the 4th century AD, a series of richly decorated tombs were built in the necropolis of the Roman provincial city of Sopiana (modern Pécs). The tombs are structurally and architecturally significant, as they are underground burial chambers, while memorial churches were built above ground. The tombs are also artistically significant, as they are richly decorated with high-quality frescoes depicting Christian themes.
Mogao Caves
Located at a strategic point on the Silk Road, a crossroads of trade and religious, cultural and intellectual influences, the Mogao Caves' 492 caves and grottoes are renowned for their statues and murals, covering 1,000 years of Buddhist art.
Monastery of Horezu
The Horezu Monastery in Wallachia was founded in 1690 by Prince Constantine Brankovan and is a masterpiece of the "Brankovan" style. It is famous for the purity and balance of its architecture, the richness of its sculptural details, the treatment of religious compositions, its devotional portraits and painted decorative works. The school of frescoes and icon painting founded by the monastery in the 18th century is renowned throughout the Balkans.
Meteora
In the almost inaccessible sandstone peaks, monks settled on these “pillars” from the 11th century onwards. Despite the difficulties, 24 such monasteries were founded during the great revival of monastic ideals in the 15th century. The 16th-century frescoes in these monasteries mark a key stage in the development of post-Byzantine painting.
Churches of Moldavia
These eight churches in northern Moldavia were built between the late 15th and 16th centuries and their facades are covered with frescoes, masterpieces of Byzantine art. The frescoes are authentic and exceptionally well preserved. Far from being mere wall decorations, the frescoes systematically covered all facades and represented a complete cycle of religious themes. Their unique compositions, elegant figures and harmonious colors blend perfectly with the surrounding countryside. The Sucevita Monastery Church, whose interior and exterior walls are entirely decorated with 16th-century frescoes, is the only church to feature the Staircase of St. John Climacus.
Medieval Monuments in Kosovo
The four buildings at the site reflect the pinnacle of Byzantine-Romanesque ecclesiastical culture, with a distinctive style of fresco painting that developed in the Balkans between the 13th and 17th centuries. The Monastery of Dečani was built in the mid-14th century for the Serbian King Stefan Dečani and also serves as his mausoleum. The Archbishop's Monastery of Pécs is a group of four domed churches that features a series of frescoes. The 13th-century frescoes in the Church of the Holy Apostles were painted in a distinctive monumental style. The early 14th-century frescoes in the Church of Our Lady of Livisa represent the emergence of the so-called Neo-Paleologo Renaissance style, which blends influences from Eastern Orthodox Byzantine and Western Romanesque traditions. This style played a decisive role in later Balkan art.
Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc, known as Grotte Chauvet-Pont d’Arc, Ardèche
Located on a limestone plateau in the Ardèche River in southern France, the site is an outstanding testimony to prehistoric art and contains the earliest known and best-preserved figurative paintings in the world, dating back to the Aurignacian period (30,000-32,000 years ago). The cave was sealed by a rockfall about 20,000 years ago and remained in its pristine state until it was discovered in 1994. To date, more than 1,000 paintings have been found on the cave walls, incorporating a variety of anthropomorphic and animal motifs. The paintings have an extraordinary aesthetic quality, demonstrating a range of techniques, including the clever use of shading, the combination of painting and engraving, anatomical accuracy, three-dimensionality and movement. They include several dangerous animal species that were difficult to observe at the time, such as mammoths, bears, cave lions, rhinos, bison and aurochs, as well as 4,000 recorded prehistoric animal remains and various human footprints.
Abbey and Altenmünster of Lorsch
The monastery and its magnificent entrance, the famous "Tor Hall", are rare architectural remains from the Carolingian period. Sculptures and paintings from this period are still well preserved.
Ajanta Caves
The first Buddhist caves at Ajanta date back to the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. During the Gupta period (5th and 6th centuries AD), a number of richly decorated caves were added to the existing complex. The paintings and sculptures of Ajanta are considered masterpieces of Buddhist religious art and have had a considerable artistic influence.
Burgos Cathedral
The Church of Our Lady of Burgos was begun in the 13th century, at the same time as the Ile-de-France Cathedral, and completed in the 15th and 16th centuries. Its superb architecture and unique collection of works of art (including paintings, choir stalls, altarpieces, tombs and stained glass windows) epitomize the entire history of Gothic art.
Benedictine Convent of St John at Müstair
Müstair Abbey, located in a valley in the canton of Graubünden, is an excellent example of a Christian monastery converted during the Carolingian period. The abbey contains Switzerland's greatest series of figurative frescoes, painted around 800 AD, as well as Romanesque murals and stuccoes.
Thracian Tomb of Sveshtari
This Thracian tomb from the 3rd century BC, discovered in 1982 near the village of Sveshtari, reflects the basic structural principles of Thracian religious architecture. The tomb has a unique architectural decoration with colorful half-human, half-vegetal caryatids and painted murals. The 10 female figures carved on the walls of the central chamber and the half-moon decoration of the chamber vault are the only such decorations found so far in the Thracian region. According to ancient geographers, it is a significant relic of the culture of the Getes, a Thracian people who had contact with the Hellenistic and Thule worlds.