Muskauer Park / Park Mużakowski

World Heritage Łęknica

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Map
Images 5

Address
Łęknica

Location
voivodeship lubuskie, county żarski, commune Łęknica

The property was inscribed on the List by World Heritage Committee in 2004. Brief Synthesis Muskauer Park/Park Mużakowski is an extensive landscape initially developed between 1815 and 1844 by Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau on the grounds of his estate, and continued by his student, Eduard Petzold. Set harmoniously in the river valley of the Lusatian Neisse, the park’s integration into the local town and surrounding agricultural landscapes heralded a new approach to landscape design and contributed to the advancement of landscape architecture as a discipline. The extensive site includes the river Neisse, other water features, manmade and natural, bridges, buildings, forested areas, and paths. It is an example of a cultural landscape in which the site’s natural attributes have been harnessed with the utmost skill.

The park is of the highest aesthetic quality and its composition blends fluidly with the naturally-formed river valley. Its essence is the visual relationship between the central residence, the New Castle, and a series of topographical focal points comprising ideal vantage points laid out along riverside terraces flanking the valley, each of which forms part of a masterfully fashioned network of vistas. Pückler incorporated human-made architectural elements into this network along with natural components, including the terrain’s geological features. It is distinctive with its extraordinary simplicity and expansiveness.

The property encompasses the central portion of this extensive landscape composition measuring 348 hectares (136.10 hectares in Germany and 211.9 hectares in Poland). The remaining part of the composition falls within the surrounding buffer zone of 1,205 hectares.

Cumulus

Pückler laid the foundations of integrated landscape design with the extension of the park into the town of Bad Muskau through green passages and urban parks. The incorporation of the community into the overall composition, as a key component in his planned utopian landscape, had a great impact on contemporary town planning, particularly in the United States (as illustrated by the green areas of the city of Boston) and on the development of the landscape architecture profession. Pückler published his principles of landscape design theory in Andeutungen über Landschaftsgärtnerei (1834). Moreover, the training of landscape gardeners by Prince von Pückler and his student Eduard Petzold helped create skill standards which influenced the work of other gardeners and planners. This training tradition has been revived in recent times by the creation of Muskauer School, as an international school for the training in garden and cultural landscape maintenance.

Criterion (i): Muskauer Park/Park Mużakowski is an exceptional example of a European landscape park that broke new ground in terms of development towards an ideal manmade landscape.

Criterion (iv): Muskauer Park/Park Mużakowski was the forerunner for new approaches to landscape design in cities, and influenced the development of landscape architecture as a discipline.

UNESCO WHC site

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