During the meeting of the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO, it was announced on Tuesday that the Lower Germanic Limes will be included on the World Heritage List. Earlier this week, the Colonies of Benevolence and the New Dutch Water Line were also placed on the prominent heritage list.
The Netherlands nominated the limes together with Germany at the beginning of last year . According to the two countries, the limes is a “unique and irreplaceable monument of universal value to humanity”.
The northern ‘Limes’ (the Latin word for border) of the Roman Empire ran through the Netherlands two thousand years ago, along the Rhine. To protect this border – part of the longer border through Europe, Asia and North Africa – Romans built watchtowers and army camps here. For example, an army camp was built near Nijmegen that could accommodate two legions of six thousand men. But fortresses in Valkenburg, Leiden, Woerden, Utrecht, Bunnik and Arnhem also left their mark, as did the Corbulo Canal at Leidschendam and various buildings in Germany.
At the time of the official nomination, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science called the Lower Germanic Limes “an example of the unique military development history of the Western Roman Empire”. During the announcement of the Unesco nomination, Minister Van Engelshoven pointed out that the Romans at the time devised innovative constructions to control the dynamic river landscape of the delta.
The outer border of the Roman Empire cuts through a large number of countries. With 19 sites in the Netherlands and 25 in Germany, the Netherlands therefore also nominated on behalf of Germany. The nomination file was drawn up together with the federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate and the provinces of South Holland, Utrecht and Gelderland.