UNESCO praises Kaunas' progress in protecting modernist heritage

UNESCO has favorably reviewed Kaunas' efforts to protect and promote its modernist architectural heritage, acknowledging the city's significant progress since its inscription on the World Heritage List in 2023. The city presented its advancements at the 48th UNESCO World Heritage Committee session in Busan, South Korea.

Following the 2023 inscription, which recognized the "outstanding universal value" of Kaunas' modernist architecture, UNESCO provided recommendations for further protection. These included better justifying Kaunas' significance in the context of Eastern and Central European modernization, clarifying the World Heritage site's boundaries, enhancing the management system, and developing an integrated protection and monitoring plan. Recommendations also covered legalizing Heritage Impact Assessments, conducting thorough inventories of interwar buildings, and increasing private owner awareness and public participation.

In response, Kaunas has systematically improved its modernist heritage protection measures. A refined statement of Outstanding Universal Value, confirming Kaunas' unique importance in European modernization, was approved nationally and by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in 2024. The buffer zone of the UNESCO value will be slightly expanded, with a boundary change submission planned. Concurrently, a comprehensive inventory of interwar buildings is underway, to be integrated into a GIS database, adding 43 new modernist objects to the cultural heritage registry over three years. The city is also finalizing management and action plans for the World Heritage site, expected this year, alongside protection plans for specific districts, which will eventually form a single integrated management plan.

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Three years ago, in 2023, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee recognized the exceptional universal value of modernist Kaunas and included it in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Although several countries expressed remarks about areas needing improvement in the application at the time, this did not cast doubt on Kaunas' eligibility for the UNESCO title. This year, we returned to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee session to present our progress – about the recommendations already implemented and other ongoing work.