Roșia Montană was included in Romania’s tentative list for UNESCO heritage

On February 5, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Environment, Waters, and Forests communicated to the World Heritage Centre in Paris the inclusion of the Roșia Montană mining cultural landscape in Romania’s tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage.

The move comes after the locality of Roșia Montană, within a 2 km radius, was classified as a Category A site in the new List of Historical Monuments, as recently announced by the Minister of Culture, Vlad Alexandrescu.

"Roșia Montană was the most active mining center of the Apuseni Mountains, starting from the first exploitations in the Bronze Age, continuing through Antiquity and the medieval period, into the Modern Era and until the recent past. Traditional mining, based on the initiative of families and small mining associations, ended with nationalization in 1948, followed by another form of mining—industrial, large-scale—which ended in 2006. At Roșia Montană, we are therefore dealing with one of the longest-lived traditional mining sites known today. Its particular endurance is reflected in a systematic and profound interconnection between the natural background and cultural phenomena—from the depths of the mountains to the surface, from the morphology of the landscape to the local flora and fauna and human communities; everything bears the mark of the significant interaction between man and the natural environment, which has generated one of Romania’s richest and most spectacular cultural landscapes, significant in a global context," says the Ministry of Culture.

According to the Ministry, the defining attributes of the site are the mining galleries—for exploitation, assistance, ventilation, and water drainage—excavated starting from the Roman period and continued through the medieval and modern periods, the Roman surface landscape, the historical industrial landscape, and the Roșia Montană mining town.

The galleries dug into the mountain massifs surrounding the locality total more than 80 km, of which 7 km date back to Antiquity, forming the most extensive and important mining exploitation system known from the Roman world, the Ministry of Culture specifies.

According to evaluations, Roșia Montană meets 5 of the criteria established by UNESCO for a site to be inscribed on the World Heritage List. 

According to the Ministry of Culture, inclusion in the national tentative list is the first procedural step toward inclusion in the World Heritage and constitutes the initial moment of a process of applied research, evaluation, and the establishment of effective long-term management mechanisms. At the end of this process, which can take several years, the Romanian state can submit the candidacy file to the World Heritage Centre.

In the last 25 years, UNESCO’s strategy regarding World Heritage, priorities, and criteria for accepting a site onto the World Heritage List have changed and been updated. „Romania must, on one hand, present viable and remarkable proposals according to UNESCO’s criteria and vision as of 2016 and, on the other hand, guarantee the conservation and management quality of sites already inscribed on the World Heritage List, so the two institutions are triggering the procedure to review and update Romania’s tentative list.

Currently, on the World Heritage List of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, are:

– Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve (inscribed in 1991), 

– The ensemble of villages with fortified churches in Transylvania (1993, 1999), 

– Horezu Monastery (1993),

– Churches of northern Moldavia (1993), 

– Dacian fortresses of the Orăștie Mountains (1999),

– Maramureș wooden churches (1999) 

– Historic center of Sighișoara (1999).