Why Bamberg is a world heritage site

In a new center visitors can find the reason for the upper Franconian town of the title. And what are the obligations, but also advantages.

For 25 years, Bamberg is a world heritage site, but Patricia Alberth has reasonable grounds to suspect that a lot of Bamberger doesn't know why their city is allowed to this title of honour to wear. "Because it is so beautiful," is a response that sounds Alberth again and again, what you are commissioned as an official world heritage site, the city can not, of course, satisfied. Alberth called some reservations from the ranks of the citizens: the world heritage site, maybe just a plaque, which attracts tourists? The special Status forbids it to change the Bamber like forever, the image of the city? New buildings are no longer possible? Such questions want to answer the new centre of the world heritage, which opens this Tuesday its doors to visitors.

A very important issue, the structure is defined, without the need to enter the free exhibition on the first floor at all. The building, a few meters from the attractions of the Old town hall and the castle of Geyerswörth far, is clearly a new building from the 21st century. Century. But also a successful example of an architecture that combines modernity with respect for the historic environment. He is in the middle of the river on the property of a historic mill complex. The Remains of the so-called sterzer mill has integrated expertly Bamberg architect Heinz Rosenberg. The city is only a tenant, the client is a Munich-based Investor, who has a penchant for buildings with hydropower production. In the basement a fire produced new Turbine power for about 300 households.

Patricia Alberth and the exhibition creators have given to the visitor's center the subtitle, "reading aid for Bamberg". "We want to give people the tools to decipher the Codes of the city," says Volker Böhm of the representative office of "h neun Berlin". In the case of a monument such as Bamberg, it was finally not so easy to identify those elements that make the city so remarkable.

In the centre of the world heritage site inform the Emperor Heinrich II and his wife Kunigunde about Bamberg's cultural treasures.

The visitors can acquire Knowledge in a playful way at each of the stations: There are buttons to Press, screens to Swipe, drawers to the Wind, listening stations, and short films. The exhibition is divided into three contrasting sections. These symbolize the three parts of the city included in the world heritage: first, the mountain city as the seat of spiritual and political Power, secondly, from the water washed over the island city as a vibrant trading centre and, finally, the city Gardener, the century of intra-urban horticulture was coined.

Even if visitors would only take the realization that three-quarters of the city, a world heritage, would be Volker Böhm will not be dissatisfied. Because many of the visitors were of the opinion that the Bamberg buildings, its title alone, the sacred and the famous tower top silhouette owe. "That the gardener town belongs to world heritage, is far too few aware of it."

How deep of tourists and Locals, for the visitors ' centre expressly also is meant, in the visitor center join is entirely up to you. Because the exhibition relies on a compact Overview, but also offers the possibility to deepen in the Details. On a touch screen, you can show how many Breweries were in the year 1812 on the trade route, the "Baroque-O-Mat" visitors will have the opportunity to provide a virtual building with Baroque-style elements, in the exhibition part of the mountain town of Henry II and Kunigunde, from the rise of the city tell the story: The childless Royal couple had made of Bamberg in 1007 to be the capital of a bishopric and of the Episcopal state.

if all that is not enough, the wise yellow signs on the way out. They are everywhere integrated in the exhibition and inform about it to learn what a Museum is and how many minutes it runs there. The question of why Bamberg, the world cultural heritage title, is defined, at the latest, on the way there, in the stairwell: "Bamberg is a unique and well-preserved example of a high medieval basic structure of developed middle-European city, with its Church and stately buildings."