During its 24th session at Cairns in Australia on the 30th of November 2000, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee placed the LLoire valley on the World Heritage list as a cultural landscape. 

This immensely prestigious region, developed over centuries and still active, the Loire valley has been placed in the 'evolving regions' category, which are subdivided into 'relic regions' and 'living regions'.

The Loire valley UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE

The Loire valley is the largest area of land in France to feature on the UNESCO list.
The territory is of one piece, stretching from Sully-sur-Loire in the department of Loiret as far as Chalonnes-sur-Loire in the department of Maine-et-Loire. 280 km from end to end, it covers an area of around 800 km2.
The Loire valley, between Sully-sur-Loire and Maine-et-Loire was one of the most important cultural centres in Renaissance Europe - a meeting place for influences from Italy, France and Flanders, a region which saw emerge the landscape civilisation of the modern world. First French, then European, this civilisation produced some of the most fully-realised models of such landscapes.

The original developments of the organisation of space and nature which appeared in this region began to appear in literary, visual and landscape representations, which raised them to the status of aesthetic and explicitly 'landscape' models, the necessary conditions to allow us to speak of a 'cultural landscape'.

Featuring on the UNESCO World Heritage list constitutes international recognition and is the consecration of long periods of hard work, in particular since 1994, when the 'Loire Grandeur Nature' plan was put in place.