Today, there is a new way to travel in Europe: one that leads to the discovery of the 80 European Heritage Label (EHL) sites, a European network of symbolic places across 23 EU Member States.
Cultural itineraries and slow tourism to connect destinations through shared European history and identity, as well as heritage digitisation, climate and cultural resilience: these are some of the objectives promoted by the EHL.
The 13 new EHL sites
Thirteen sites will enrich the list of destinations to explore. The sites will receive the European Heritage Label during the award ceremony to be held in Brussels on 22 April 2026.
A panel of independent experts selected the 13 winners from a shortlist of 21 candidates proposed by the Member States. Each site symbolises a unique aspect of European history and the process of European integration, embodying the fundamental values at the heart of Europe.
A key factor in the award of the Label was their commitment to public engagement, particularly with the next generation of European travellers, thereby transforming young people into active participants in cultural citizenship.
The mosaic of European identity
The 13 sites announced on 22 April include: the Landeszeughaus in Graz, Austria, the world’s largest preserved historical armoury, a European centre for reflection, education and cooperation.
The Domain & Royal Museum in Mariemont, Belgium, is a key European site for understanding power, culture and historical exchanges: today it is a public museum of world cultures.
In Provadia, Bulgaria, lies one of Europe’s oldest fortified salt-producing and urban centres. The site demonstrates how the sharing of resources, innovation and long-distance trade shaped the earliest European connections.
The Free Speech Space, meanwhile, brings together 14 symbolic sites across the Czech Republic to tell a European story of resistance to censorship and the struggle for freedom of expression under the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century.
Then there is the industrial community of Varkaus in Finland, a project of social development and reform spanning from the late nineteenth century to the present day.
The sites dedicated to Rashi in Troyes, France, preserve the memory of the Jewish presence as an integral part of European history, highlighting the contribution of Jewish thought and culture to Europe’s pluralistic identity, from the Middle Ages to the present day. A symbol of tolerance and the transmission of knowledge across generations and borders.
The urban river landscape along the River Pader in Germany has been awarded the European Heritage Label because it addresses water management, technological innovation and the sustainable use of resources as a common challenge at European level.
The Catacombs of St Paul, one of the largest and most complex early Christian burial sites in the Mediterranean, reflect Malta’s position at the crossroads of European and Mediterranean cultures and illustrate the coexistence of different religious communities: polytheistic, Jewish and Christian.
The Krzysztof Penderecki European Centre for Music in Poland embodies Europe’s rich musical heritage as a space for creation, transmission and intercultural dialogue, which resonated beyond national borders during the Cold War and beyond.
Dating back 29,000 years, the Lagar Velho rock shelter in central Portugal is one of the continent’s most important prehistoric archaeological sites: it represents Europe’s deep biological and cultural interconnectedness, because diversity, integration and cultural exchange are not modern phenomena, but rather founding elements of European identity.
The La Nau Cultural Centre in Spain, meanwhile, embodies the European intellectual tradition born of Renaissance humanism, which for five centuries has continued to shape Europe’s cultural and democratic life.
Peace across borders
These are complemented by “Places of Peace”, a transnational network of European Heritage sites linking locations in Portugal, Spain, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia and Bulgaria. Together, these places, where peace treaties were concluded over the centuries, bear witness to Europe’s long and complex history of conflict resolution, diplomacy and negotiated coexistence across borders.
As a collective site, Places of Peace illustrates peace not as a single event, but as a recurring European process: one of Europe’s most enduring and distinctive values.
It takes a forest to build a community
We have another European Heritage Site in Italy: the “Bosco delle Querce”.
Located between Seveso and Meda (Monza and Brianza), this place is a powerful European symbol of environmental responsibility and collective rebirth. The park was created on land contaminated by the industrial accident at the Swiss company ICMESA: the incident on 10 July 1976 was one of the most serious environmental disasters in modern European history. What was once a site of ecological devastation has now been transformed into a protected natural area and a place of remembrance.
The “Bosco delle Querce” is an Italian and European initiative promoting sustainable and regenerative tourism: an example of climate resilience where heritage becomes the driving force behind balanced development centred on our shared European home. Because Europe begins with us, with our communities.
Mondo Internazionale APS - Riproduzione Riservata ® 2026
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L'Autore
Giuliana Băruș
Studi in Giurisprudenza e Diritto Internazionale a Trieste.
Oltre che di Diritto (e di diritti), appassionata di geopolitica, giornalismo – quello lento, narrativo, che racconta storie ed esplora mondi – fotoreportage, musica underground e cinema indipendente.
Da sempre “permanently dislocated – un voyageur sur la terre” – abita i confini, fisici e metaforici, quelle patrie elettive di chi si sente a casa solo nell'intersezionalità di sovrapposizioni identitarie: la realtà in divenire si vede meglio agli estremi che dal centro. Viaggiare per scrivere – soprattutto di migrazioni, conflitti e diritti – e scrivere per viaggiare, alla ricerca di geografie interiori per esplorarne l’ambiguità e i punti d’ombra creati dalla luce.
Nel 2023, ha viaggiato e vissuto in quattro paesi diversi: Romania, sua terra d'origine, Albania, Georgia e Turchia.
Affascinata, quindi, dallo spazio post-sovietico dell'Europa centro-orientale; dalla cultura millenaria del Mediterraneo; e dalle sfaccettate complessità del Medio Oriente.
In Mondo Internazionale Post è autrice per la sezione “Organizzazioni Internazionali”.
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