Western Europe

Full front view of the Wurzburg Residence: a massive palace, several stories tall and extremely wide. A symmetrical design with a round dome above the entrance and smaller domes at each end.

Würzburg Residence with the Court Gardens and Residence Square

A magnificent 18th-century baroque palace and accompanying garden.

Historic Center of Vienna

An urban center with a wide range of outstanding historical architecture, viewed as the music capital of Europe.

A wide, white low building of about 5 stories with the ground floor on pillars to allow traffic through.

Berlin Modernism Housing Estates

Apartment complexes designed in the early 20th century to improve living conditions for low-income families.

The pretty marketplace in Quedlinburg: cobbled plaza with half-timbered houses around it.

Collegiate Church, Castle and Old Town of Quedlinburg

A medieval town known for its Romanesque church/castle on a cliff and its picturesque half-timbered houses.

A view of a cluster of half-timbered buildings with balconies and flower boxes.

Strasbourg, Grande-Île and Neustadt

Two districts, one exemplifying medieval cities, the other a model of modern city planning.

A row of pretty buildings, 3-4 stories high, along a river in Bamberg.

Town of Bamberg

A beautifully intact medieval city center with over 1000 historic buildings as well as an early example of urban farming.

A white brick building, quite grand, with a row of oddly-shaped pillars supporting a triangular pediment.

From the Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bains to the Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans, the Production of Open-pan Salt

Two locations that exemplify the historical process of salt production and industrial architecture.

A pretty brick building with small turrets and gothic windows at Dessau-Worlitz.

Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz

A huge English-style garden and the structures in it that illustrate the principles of Enlightenment ideals in landscape design.

Baroque towers on the Abbey's cathedral.

Abbey of St. Gall

An 8th-century monastery with a beautiful Baroque cathedral and an ancient library.

The glacier flows between rocky peaks, looking like a river covered in snow.

Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch

A spectacular mountain and glacier landscape in the Alps.

Two parallel small canals/ditches in the Beemster Polder, with a strip of field between them, a fence across the near end of it. Trees on either side.

Droogmakerij de Beemster (Beemster Polder)

A landscape exemplifying creative Dutch land reclamation.

A stone bridge across a river, made of 3 rows of Romanesque arches. The bottom and middle rows are quite large arches; the top row has more arches and they're considerably smaller.

Pont du Gard (Roman Aqueduct)

A 3-tiered stone aqueduct and bridge that demonstrates Roman-era construction processes.

A view along the Seine seen from one bank. Below, lower than street level, is a bank with 2 rows of cafe tables capped with umbrellas. Between the cafe tables and the water is a path with people walking and biking, and a railing along the water. A tourist boat passes under a bridge over the river.

Paris, Banks of the Seine

A 365-hectare corridor that encompasses many of the most famous sights in Paris, spanning centuries of the city’s development.

The Rietveld Schröderhuis is all flat surfaces in squares and rectangles. Two stories tall, made of concrete, painted in large areas of gray and white, with a few small vertical and horizontal elements in red and yellow. This view is from The front: a large white vertical panel in the center, a white horizontal panel on the left and grey on the right, large windows.

Rietveld Schröderhuis (Rietveld Schröder House)

A 1920s family house exemplifying the ideals of the De Stijl group of architects and artists.

An exterior view of the Plantin-Moretus Museum's courtyard: red brick, 2-3 stories high, with 2 gables visible, and a portico along the ground floor.

Plantin-Moretus House-Workshops-Museum Complex

300 years of printing history and domestic life, with art by Rubens.

View along a cobbled street in Lyon, with a few arched storefronts in the foreground.

Historic Site of Lyon

A city with 2000 years of history visible in its urban center’s architecture.

A long building with a row of columns all along the front like a Greek temple. In front of it, a fountain.

Museumsinsel (Museum Island), Berlin

5 museums that demonstrate the evolution of museums and museum design.

View down a canal with a range of medieval-era buildings one either side.

Historic Centre of Brugge

A completely intact, mostly Gothic, core of a medieval trading city.

Looking down a long row of houses, all with about 4 stories, all painted in pastel colors, all with decorative gables and shops on the ground floor.

Historic Centers of Stralsund and Wismar

Remarkable collections of “Brick Gothic” churches and other buildings unique to these former Hanseatic ports.

The hall is large, with a row of pillars down the center and tall arched windows on either side. the pillars support a ceiling with gothic arches.

Maulbronn Monastery Complex

An intact and complete medieval monastery that demonstrates the transition from Romanesque to Gothic architecture.

A view down on the lower city from a city wall in Luxembourg: below are pretty smaller buildings as well as a simple church.

City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and Fortifications

Impressive fortifications and the original urban center of a historically important city.

Van Nellefabriek

A masterpiece of modernist industrial design from the inter-war period.

Mont-Saint-Michel appears as a pile of stone structures up a hill, forming a conical shape with a recognizably Gothic church spire at the top.

Mont-Saint-Michel and its bay

A magnificent Gothic abbey on top of a small island in a bay with dramatic tides.

A short length of street in Provins lined with medieval-period houses. The one on the left is half-timbered.

Provins, Town of Medieval Fairs

A beautifully intact example of a medieval trading city.

A bridge leads to an arched gateway with a square tower next to it in Regensburg, Germany.

Old Town of Regensburg with Stadtamhof

A beautifully-preserved and very picturesque medieval trading city.

In the foreground, a church with a square bell tower. In the background, on a hill, the castle Castelgrande in Bellinzona. Beyond that, a higher mountain.

Three Castles, Defensive Wall and Ramparts of the Market-Town of Bellinzona

Medieval-era fortifications that once guarded a key strategic pass in the southern Alps.

A view into a wide gorge - a river cut through the bottom, and low shrubs or grasses along both banks and up the sides of the gorge.

The Causses and the Cévennes, Mediterranean agro-pastoral Cultural Landscape

A rural landscape shaped by centuries of farming, where old agricultural techniques are still in use.

Two large arches in the center serve as the gateway. Two floors above lined with arched windows, an extra floor forms a short tower on the left side of the gateway. The whole is made of carved stone that looks dirty.

Roman Monuments, Cathedral of St Peter and Church of Our Lady in Trier

A collection of Roman ruins showing the importance of the “Rome of the North” in Germany.

The Church of St. Trophime in Arles has a Romanesque entranceway, shown in this photo. Rounded arches above a double door, pillars on each side of the door.

Arles, Roman and Romanesque Monuments

A grand Roman city and its later Romanesque additions, well-preserved in Arles city center.

A small building standing apart from other buildings, the gatehouse at Lorsch has two stories. The ground floor is open, with 3 arches front and back, so, from this front view, you can see through the building. The upper story has 3 small windows. The facade has rather intricate stonework, with a checkerboard pattern of red and light brown bricks. A half-round structure has been added at each end.

Abbey and Altenmünster of Lorsch

A rare example of architecture from the Carolingian period.

Speyer Cathedral

A landmark of Romanesque architecture dating to the 11th century.

A row of houses on the other side of a river: very much a Dutch style of facade, tall and narrow with a variety of different roof shapes. Unlike in the Netherlands, though, they are painted in lots of different colors. In front of them, between the water and the buildings: outdoor cafe seating with umbrellas.

Historic Area of Willemstad, Inner City and Harbour, Curaçao

A colorful, dynamic and diverse Caribbean island capital with four distinct historical districts.

The fortress walls on the left, with rounded towers flanking a gate. A stone bridge with multiple arches leads into the gate. Along the wall are two further round guard towers with pointed roofs.

Historic Fortified City of Carcassonne

A classic medieval fortified town with intact walls, a castle, and a Gothic cathedral.

A palace: not huge, but elegant. Two stories, plus another under the roof, which has a small cupola-like tower in the middle. The walls are yellow with white trim.

Classical Weimar

An influential cultural center in the late 18th and early 19th century as demonstrated today in the quality of its architecture and parks.

The castle is perched on a hill, with a single square tower in its middle. The left'hand wing is brick and/or stone, while the right-hand wing is white plaster with exposed timber beams.

Wartburg Castle

An imposing castle, important because of its role in Martin Luther’s life.

Looking down a wide path to a large palace: several stories high, it extends past the edges of the photo on both sides. Above the center is a large copper dome.

Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin

An ensemble of stately palaces dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, along with their extensive gardens.