Le village du Thoureil, dans le département du Maine-et-Loire, pris depuis un drone. un banc de sable occupe le premier plan, en bas de l'image. De nombreux bateaux sont amarrés le long du quai que surplombent des maisons cossues en tuffeau et ardoise. Derrière le village, on aperçoit quelques parcelles agricoles et des massifs forestiers.

Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of the Loire Valley World Heritage

To be included on the World Heritage List, sites must be of outstanding universal value and meet at least one out of ten selection criteria. The Loire Valley meets three of the ten criteria defined by UNESCO.

The Loire Valley is a cultural landscape shaped by centuries of interaction between the river, the lands it flows through, and the communities who have settled there down the ages.

The Loire was a major trade and communications route from Gallo-Roman times right up until the 19^th century, helping the economy of the valley and its towns and cities to grow and thrive. This is evidenced in the myriad structures built to channelise, or direct the flow of, the river for navigation and to protect its land and people from flooding, such as the many ports or levees, at times built up, alongside the river.

The Loire has moulded not just rural landscapes, in the organisation of the land and types of crops (market gardening, vines) but also urban landscapes. Human settlements, isolated farmsteads, villages and towns reflect both the physical characteristics of the different stretches of the river and their changes over time, as attested by the tuffeau stone and slate architecture, troglodyte dwellings and urban network.

“Cultural landscapes are cultural properties and represent the 'combined works of nature and of man' designated in Article 1 of the Convention. They are illustrative of the evolution of human society and settlement over time, under the influence of the physical constraints and/or opportunities presented by their natural environment and of successive social, economic and cultural forces, both external and internal.”

… evolving …

An organically evolved cultural landscape “results from an initial social, economic, administrative, and/or religious imperative and has developed its present form by association with and in response to its natural environment.”

… and continuing

“A continuing landscape is one which retains an active social role in contemporary society closely associated with the traditional way of life, and in which the evolutionary process is still in progress.”

Source: Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention

The political and social history of France and Western Europe in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when the Loire Valley was the seat of royal power, can be read in the castles, châteaux and residences for which it is so famous: Benedictine abbeys to begin with, and then mediaeval fortresses which were converted during Renaissance times into stately homes nestling within gardens and looking out onto the landscape. In the 15^th and 16^th centuries, the Loire Valley was a cultural hotspot brimming with encounters and influences between the Italian Mediterranean, France and Flanders, and played a key part in developing the art of gardens and in the blossoming interest in landscapes.

The criteria

Criterion (i)

The Loire Valley is noteworthy for the quality of its architectural heritage, in its historic towns such as Blois, Chinon, Orléans, Saumur and Tours, but in particular in its world-famous castles, such as the Château de Chambord.

Criterion (ii)

The Loire Valley is an outstanding cultural landscape along a major river. It bears witness to an interchange of human values and to a harmonious development of interactions between humankind and their environment over two millennia.

Criterion (iv)

The landscape of the Loire Valley, and more particularly its many cultural monuments, illustrate to an exceptional degree the ideals of the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment on western European thought and design.

Chambord was previously inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1981 on the basis of this last criterion.

(i)

Represent a masterpiece of human creative genius

(ii)

Exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design

(iv)

Be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history