All About World Heritage Sites

Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe

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Velebit Mountain, Croatia (Gorga/Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Albania (Elbasan, Tirana, Durres)
 Austria (Linz, Vienna, Graz)
 Belgium (Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi)
 Bulgaria (Stara Zagora, Sofia, Plovdiv)
 Croatia (Zadar, Rijeka, Zagreb)
 Germany (Berlin, Leipzig, Hamburg)
 Italy (Rome, Naples, Bologna)
 Romania (Brasov, Cluj, Bucharest)
 Slovakia (Michalovce, Kosice, Presov)
 Slovenia (Ljubljana, Celje, Maribor)
 Ukraine (Lviv, Chernivtsi, Ternopil)
Date of Inscription: 2007
Extension: 2011,2017
Criteria: (ix)
Property : 92,023.24 ha
Buffer zone: 253,815.38 ha
Ref: 1133ter

This transboundary extension of the World Heritage site of the Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and the Ancient Beech Forests of Germany (Germany, Slovakia, Ukraine) stretches over 12 countries. Since the end of the last Ice Age, European beech spread from a few isolated refuges in the Alps, Carpathians, Mediterranean and Pyrenees over a short period of a few thousand years in a process that is still ongoing. This successful expansion is related to the tree’s flexibility and tolerance of different climatic, geographical and physical conditions.