Britain’s Lake District, an area of wild beauty that beguiled poets and artists from William Wordsworth to Beatrix Potter, was named Sunday as a World Heritage site by UNESCO. The UN’s cultural body meeting this weekend in Krakow praised the region’s “picturesque aesthetic” as well as its links with Romantic art and literature.
“The special significance of the Lake District lies in the interaction between social, economic, cultural and environmental influences,” it said in a statement. Considered the cradle of the British Romanticism movement pioneered by Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, the region becomes Britain’s 31st World Heritage site. John Glen, minister for arts, heritage and tourism, said the new status would boost the Lake District’s international reputation and benefit locals.
“It is a unique part of the world that combines a vibrant farming community with thousands of archaeological sites and structures that give us an amazing glimpse into our past,” he said in a statement. UNESCO’s heritage committee considered 33 sites for the prestigious status at its annual gathering in Poland. On Sunday it also accepted Taputapuatea, a portion of the “Polynesian Triangle” in the South Pacific thought to be the last part of the globe settled by humans, to the list.
Grasmere in the lake district
