Major Town Houses of the Architect Victor Horta, Brussels, Belgium

This postcard was sent by Martinha for the "Missing Unesco" tag. It shows the house and studio of the architect Victor Horta, in Brussels. She bought it on a trip there when she visited the museum and she says the visit is well worth it. I've been thinking about visiting Brussels for a weekend in winter... I'll definitely check it out if I'm there.

The four major town houses - Hôtel Tassel, Hôtel Solvay, Hôtel van Eetvelde, and Maison & Atelier Horta - located in Brussels and designed by the architect Victor Horta, one of the earliest initiators of Art Nouveau, are some of the most remarkable pioneering works of architecture of the end of the 19th century. The stylistic revolution represented by these works is characterised by their open plan, the diffusion of light, and the brilliant joining of the curved lines of decoration with the structure of the building.

Source: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1005

Historic Area of Willemstad, Inner City and Harbour, Curaçao

The last couple of weeks have been really great for my Unesco collection, I managed to arrange some pretty awesome trades of rare places, and this is one of them. It also completes the Netherlands for now :) It was sent by Gosia.

The people of the Netherlands established a trading settlement at a fine natural harbour on the Caribbean island of Curaçao in 1634. The town developed continuously over the following centuries. The modern town consists of several distinct historic districts whose architecture reflects not only European urban-planning concepts but also styles from the Netherlands and from the Spanish and Portuguese colonial towns with which Willemstad engaged in trade.
Source: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/819

I love this postcard, it's so colourful and "Caribbean", specially the letters with flowers. It's funny because, when I opened the Unesco page for this site, there was a photo from above overlooking the roofs of the houses and it did seem like Lisbon, with the orange roofs and square streets!

Almadén and the new Unesco sites

The good (or bad?) thing about collecting Unesco postcards is that it's a never-ending collection. Not only are there sites almost impossible to get, but every year new sites are added to the list.

This year, the Unesco comittee added 26 new sites (article). I have a couple of them but this week I arranged a trade with Fabienne famalubel and I got a card from Almadén, inscribed as Heritage of Mercury (shared with Idrija in Slovenia).

This is the card I got from Almadén mines.

The property includes the mining sites of Almadén, where mercury (quicksilver) has been extracted since Antiquity, and Idrija, where mercury was first found in 1490 A.D. The Spanish property includes buildings relating to its mining history, including Retamar Castle, religious buildings and traditional dwellings. The site in Idrija notably features mercury stores and infrastructure, as well as miners’ living quarters, and a miners’ theatre. The sites bear testimony to the intercontinental trade in mercury which generated important exchanges between Europe and America over the centuries. The two sites represent the two largest mercury mines in the world and were operational until recent times.

Source: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1313/

Fabienne also sent me two extras! Although I already had cards from these sites, they are really great and show inside views, which I didn't have yet. The first card shows Aranjuez:

The Aranjuez cultural landscape is an entity of complex relationships: between nature and human activity, between sinuous watercourses and geometric landscape design, between the rural and the urban, between forest landscape and the delicately modulated architecture of its palatial buildings.

Source: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1044

The second card shows the Monastery of El Escorial. 

Built at the end of the 16th century on a plan in the form of a grill, the instrument of the martyrdom of St Lawrence, the Escurial Monastery stands in an exceptionally beautiful site in Castile. Its austere architecture, a break with previous styles, had a considerable influence on Spanish architecture for more than half a century. It was the retreat of a mystic king and became, in the last years of Philip II's reign, the centre of the greatest political power of the time.

Source: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/318

Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy, Italy

This is a new addition to my Unesco collection. It shows Orta, which is one of the nine "Sacri Monti" in the northern region of Italy. It was sent by aj-person.

One of my personal goals is to complete at least Italy and I'm happy because this place is not so easy to get :)

The nine Sacri Monti (Sacred Mountains) of northern Italy are groups of chapels and other architectural features created in the late 16th and 17th centuries and dedicated to different aspects of the Christian faith. In addition to their symbolic spiritual meaning, they are of great beauty by virtue of the skill with which they have been integrated into the surrounding natural landscape of hills, forests and lakes. They also house much important artistic material in the form of wall paintings and statuary.
Source: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1068/