UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Germany

St. Michael's Church

The Church of St. Michael is an early-Romanesque church in Hildesheim. It has been on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage list since 1985 together with near St. Mary"s Cathedral. Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim (996-1022) built a Benedictine monastery from the ground up on a hill near the city walls. Bernward set the first stone for the new church in 1010 and dedicated the still unfinished building to Michael on the ar ...

Founded: 1010-1022 | Location: Hildesheim, Germany

Maulbronn Monastery

Founded in 1147, the Cistercian Maulbronn Monastery is considered the most complete and best-preserved medieval monastic complex north of the Alps. Surrounded by fortified walls, the main buildings were constructed between the 12th and 16th centuries. The monastery"s church, mainly in Transitional Gothic style, had a major influence in the spread of Gothic architecture over much of northern and central Europe. The water-m ...

Founded: 1147 | Location: Maulbronn, Germany

Saalburg

The Saalburg is a Roman fort located on the Taunus ridge northwest of Bad Homburg. It is a Cohort Fort belonging to the Limes Germanicus, the Roman linear border fortification of the German provinces. The Saalburg, located just off the main road roughly halfway between Bad Homburg and Wehrheim is the most completely reconstructed Roman fort in Germany. Since 2005, as part of the Upper German limes, it forms part of a UNES ...

Founded: 90-135 AD | Location: Bad Homburg, Germany

Liebfrauenkirche

The Liebfrauenkirche (German for Church of Our Lady) is, along with the Cathedral of Magdeburg the earliest Gothic church in Germany and falls into the architectural tradition of the French Gothic cathedrals. It is designated as part of the Roman Monuments, Cathedral of St. Peter and Church of Our Lady in Trier UNESCO World Heritage Site. A Roman double church originally stood here. The southern portion was torn down aro ...

Founded: c. 1230 | Location: Trier, Germany

Quedlinburg Abbey

Quedlinburg Abbey was a house of secular canonesses. It was founded on the castle hill of Quedlinburg in the present Saxony-Anhalt in 936 by Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, at the request of his mother Queen Matilda, later canonised as Saint Matilda, in honour of her late husband, Otto"s father, King Henry the Fowler, and as his memorial. Henry was buried here, as was Matilda herself. Thanks to its Imperial connections the n ...

Founded: 936 AD | Location: Quedlinburg, Germany

Siemensstadt Housing Estate

The Siemensstadt Housing Estate (Großsiedlung Siemensstadt) is a nonprofit residential community in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district. It is one of the six Modernist Housing Estates in Berlin recognized in July 2008 by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. It was built between 1929 and 1931, under the overall master plan of German architect Hans Scharoun. Seven prominent Weimar-era architects took part: Scharoun, Fred ...

Founded: 1929-1931 | Location: Berlin, Germany

Ducal Vault

Weimar’s Ducal Vault is not a typical burial place for a royal family. Since 1832, the members of the House of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach have shared their tomb with the two most famous poets of Weimar classicism, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. As a result, the mausoleum has been a popular site of veneration for the poets ever since the mid-19th century. The construction of the Ducal Vault was commiss ...

Founded: 1823-1828 | Location: Weimar, Germany

Park an der Ilm

The 48-hectare landscaped park on the edge of Weimar’s old town is part of a kilometre-long stretch of green along the Ilm. It was laid between 1778 and 1828 and features both sentimental, classical and post-classical/romantic styles. The creation of the park on the Ilm river is closely linked with Goethe’s life and work in Weimar. In 1776, Duke Carl August gave the poet a small house with a garden, today kno ...

Founded: 1778-1828 | Location: Weimar, Germany

Boppard Roman Fort

Boppard’s most famous sight is a castrum, a Roman Fort. The military camp of Bodobrica was established here in 360 AD. It is thought to be the best preserved example north of the Alps today. It once had 28 towers, and was a commercial centre as well as a fort. It was 308 × 154 metres and formed a rectangle of 4,7 hectare. The walls were 3 metres thick to the land side and 2,5 metres thick to the Rhine side. W ...

Founded: 360 AD | Location: Boppard, Germany

Historic Centre of Stralsund

The medieval towns of Wismar and Stralsund were major trading centres of the Hanseatic League in the 14th and 15th centuries. In the 17th and 18th centuries they became Swedish administrative and defensive centres for the German territories. They contributed to the development of the characteristic building types and techniques of Brick Gothic in the Baltic region, as exemplified in several important brick cathedrals, the ...

Founded: 1240 | Location: Stralsund, Germany

Schloss Belvedere

Belvedere Castle stands on a hill at the south of Weimar and is surrounded by 43 hectares of parkland. Duke Ernst August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach had a Baroque summer residence including an orangery, pleasure garden and labyrinth built here between 1724 and 1748. Since 1923, Belvedere Castle has been used as a museum of 18th century crafts. The castle, which originally served as a hunting lodge, is surrounded by stables w ...

Founded: 1724-1748 | Location: Weimar, Germany

Martin Luther's Death House

Martin Luther"s Death House (Martin Luthers Sterbehaus) is the historic building in Eisleben, where it was incorrectly thought that Martin Luther died on 18 February 1546. Since then it has become a museum and a UNESCO world heritage site. The city of Eisleben, located in Saxony-Anhalt, is also where Martin Luther was born and baptised; his birth house is also a UNESCO world heritage site and museum. It is no ...

Founded: 1546 | Location: Eisleben, Germany

Cecilienhof Palace

Cecilienhof Palace was built from 1914 to 1917. Emperor Wilhelm II ordered the establishment of a fund for constructing this new palace at Potsdam for his oldest son, Crown Prince Wilhelm (William) and his wife, Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin on 19 December 1912. Cecilienhof was the last palace built by the House of Hohenzollern that ruled the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Empire until the end of World War I. ...

Founded: 1914-1917 | Location: Potsdam, Germany

Duchess Anna Amalia Library

The Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar houses a major collection of German literature and historical documents. The library contains 1,000,000 books, 2,000 medieval and early modern manuscripts, 600 ancestral registers, 10,000 maps etc. The research library today has approximately 850,000 volumes with collection emphasis on the German literature. Among its special collections is an important Shakespeare collection of a ...

Founded: 1761 | Location: Weimar, Germany

Marksburg Castle

Marksburg as the only undamaged hilltop castle in the Middle Rhine Valley. In the early 12th century records mention the Noble Freemen of Brubach (who probably built the lower part of the keep around 1117), even though the castle itself is first referred to in 1231. The Lords of Eppstein built the Romanesque castle complex with its triangular layout, characteristic of the Staufer era. The Eppsteins were amongst the most p ...

Founded: c. 1117 | Location: Braubach, Germany

Igel Column

The Igel Column is a multi-storeyed Roman sandstone column in the municipality of Igel, Trier, dated to c. 250 AD. The column represents a burial monument of the cloth merchant family of the Secundinii. Measuring 30 m in height, it is crowned by the sculptural group of Jupiter and Ganymede. The column includes a four-stepped base, a relatively low podium, topped by a projecting cornice, a storey, its flat Corinthi ...

Founded: c. 250 AD | Location: Igel, Germany

St. Jacob's Church

St. Jacob"s church is easy to recognise from a distance as it has four spherical globes on the tower"s helm edge. The three-naved Gothic brick hall church (built in 1334) has been the church of seafarers since the Middle Ages. It was consecrated together with St. Mary"s and St. Peter"s. Since the church did not suffer any damage during the 2nd World War, the boxed pew and historic organ are still intac ...

Founded: 1334 | Location: Lübeck, Germany

Barbara Baths

The Barbara Baths (Barbarathermen) are a large Roman bath complex designated as part of the Roman Monuments, Cathedral of St. Peter and Church of Our Lady in Trier UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Barbara Baths were built in the second century AD. The extensive ruins were used as a castle in the Middle Ages, then torn down and recycled as building material until the remains were used for constructing a Jesuit College in 16 ...

Founded: 100-200 AD | Location: Trier, Germany

Wieskirche

The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden. The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to ...

Founded: 1745-1754 | Location: Steingaden, Germany

Stahleck Castle

The exact building year of Stahleck castle is not known, but it has been proved that the castle was already occupied since the year 1095. It's first mentioned in documents in the year 1135 under Goswin von Hochstadt. Until 1148 almost 10 years of fight followed for the rights of the Stahleck. In the year 1156, after the death of Hermann of Stahleck, his stepbrother Konrad von Hohenstaufen became count palatine of Bachara ...

Founded: c. 1135 | Location: Bacharach, Germany