Regensburg is a delightful city. Situated on the Danube in Bavaria, its heart is a medieval town sitting within the walls of a Roman fortress. Few modern buildings have been erected within this perimeter. Two hundred and more years ago, Regensburg was a very important place, because from 1663 it was the seat of the Imperial Diet: the general assembly of the Holy Roman Empire. It lost this status when, on 6 August 1806, the Holy Roman Empire, a political entity that had existed for a thousand years, was abolished in the face of the triumphs of Napoleon. There are many reasons why Regensburg deserves its World Heritage status.
It was to Regensburg that I went in May 2026 to launch the 22nd volume in a series of multi-language books dedicated to the frontiers of the Roman Empire. The series was established in 2005 to support the nomination of these frontiers as a UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) World Heritage Site (WHS).
A new type of WHS
Hadrian’s Wall became a WHS in 1987, and for nearly 20 years was the only Roman frontier to have achieved that status. About 2000, there was a move to nominate the Upper German-Raetian frontier as a WHS. This is the great land frontier that ran from the Rhine near Bonn to the Danube near Eining. It was a 550km-long linear barrier, initially in the form of a timber palisade, but later replaced by an earthen bank or a stone wall. Arranged along this line were forts of various sizes, fortlets, and towers. Many of the individual sites have achieved iconic status, such as the fort known as ‘the Saalburg’ in the Taunus Mountains, which was partially reconstructed with the financial support of Kaiser Wilhelm II; there are also numerous Roman towers that have been reconstructed with greater or lesser degrees of accuracy, but that are beloved by their local communities.
