PHNOM PENH: A dozen Renaissance villas built by Italy’s powerful Medici family and monuments from North Korea’s medieval city of Kaesong were granted World Heritage status by Unesco yesterday.
Constructed outside Florence, the villas and their gardens were commissioned by the Medicis, a Tuscan banking dynasty instrumental in the politics and culture of Renaissance-era Italy. “The economic, financial and political fortunes of the Medicis were behind extensive patronage that had a decisive effect on the cultural and artistic history of modern Europe,” Unesco said.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation committee session also listed 12 monuments — including tombs, fortress walls and a 700-year-old school — at Kaesong as World Heritage sites. The monuments “embody” the Koryo dynasty which unified the Korean peninsula for the first time, and its “political, cultural, philosophical and spiritual values” of the kingdom, Unesco said.
The Kaesong monuments — including sections of defensive walls — have survived repeated assaults on the city, which served as the seat of the Koryo kings who ruled from 918-1392. They are located several kilometres from an industrial park jointly run by the divided North and South.
Hailing Kaesong’s “outstanding universal value”, Unesco said the monuments “are exceptional testimony to the unified Koryo civilization as Buddhism gave way to neo-Confucianism in East Asia”.
As the decision was announced, several black-suited North Korean delegates stood and applauded, with one unfurling a national flag. Thanking Unesco for the listing, one of the North Koreans hailed the “joyful occasion”. Kaesong was established in 919 as the capital of the Koryo dynasty, which gave its name to the modern state of Korea.
Afp
