Regensburger Welterbe Urkunde © Stadt Regensburg

The 2000-year-old town is pedestrian-friendly and allows only limited access to motor-verhicles. The town´s buildings have been carefully restored over the past few decades. But more importantly the town has kept it´s charm and continues to be a lively business and cultural centre.

The "Old Town of Regensburg with Stadtamhof" embraces almost 1,000 individual, historic buildings. They stand as testimony to the town`s development over many centuries. This core ensemble formed the basis to the World Heritage designation, albeit another 500 historic buildings lie outside of the designated old town boundary.

Criteria

In order to be enlisted as World Heritage, a site must meet several conditions. For one, it must be unique, in other words. possess "Outstanding Universal Value"."OUV" falls under 10 criteria which are described in the Operational Guidelines for the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. UNESCO stipulates that a site fulfill at least one of these 10 criteria. "The Old Town of Regensburg with Stadtamhof" fulfills three: criteria ii, iii, and iv.

• Criterion (ii): Regensburg’s architecture reflects the role of the city as a mediaeval trading centre and its influence on the region north of the Alps. Regensburg was an important trading centre on the continental trading routes to Italy, Bohemia, Russia, and Byzantium. In addition, the city had numerous links to the intercontinental silk routes. This enabled an important exchange of cultural and architectural influences to be made which are characteristic of the city’s townscape even today (ii).

• Criterion (iii):The Regensburg Old Town displays an extraordinary testimony of cultural traditions in the Holy Roman Empire. In the high Middle Ages Regensburg was a favourite meeting place for Imperial Assemblies, but in more recent European history the city also made its contribution as the seat of the Perpetual Imperial Diet from 1663 to 1806. The remains of two royal palaces which date from the 9th century and also the numerous well-preserved historical buildings are evidence of the one-time wealth and the political significance of the city (iii).

• Criterion (iv): The Old Town of Regensburg is an excellent example of an inner-European mediaeval trading town whose historical stages of development are well preserved. The development of the trade from the 11th up to the 14th century in particular is illustrated thereby extraordinarily well (iv).