Fertö / Neusiedlersee Cultural Landscape
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How it came to be
Lake Fertő, or Neusiedler See, straddles the border of Austria and Hungary and is the westernmost steppe lake in Eurasia. It has no outflow, and its bed has dried out completely at least 100 times since it formed. Cultures have met around its shores for some 8,000 years.
From the 7th century BC people of the Hallstatt culture lived along the lake, and the fields of almost every village around it hold remains of Roman villas. The present pattern of towns and villages took shape in the 12th and 13th centuries, and markets flourished from 1277. Rust, a free town grown rich on the wine trade, was refortified in the early 16th century.
Sixteen settlements form an inner ring round the lake and 20 more an outer ring. The 18th and 19th centuries brought palaces such as the Esterházy Palace at Fertőd and the Széchenyi Palace at Nagycenk. Leitha limestone quarried here from Roman times to the mid-20th century went into buildings in Vienna and Sopron. The landscape was inscribed in 2001.
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