UNESCO World Heritage Dolomites Special Award at the most important festivals centred on the mountains
What links Hotel Spaander, in the picturesque coastal village of Volendam near Amsterdam, to the La Nave d’Oro hotel in Predazzo, once a crossroads of scientists and intellectuals between the 18th and 19th centuries? The answer lies in the jury’s motivation for awarding, at the latest edition of Pordenonelegge, the Special UNESCO Dolomites World Heritage Site Prize to Jan Brokken’s book The Discovery of Holland (Iperborea Publishers).
The imagination born from contemplation
On Saturday 20th September, as part of the 2025 edition of the prestigious Pordenone festival, the Dutch writer, journalist, and traveller was presented with the recognition reserved for those who, through their work, help promote the values that made the UNESCO recognition possible, not only in the Dolomite context. This is the case with Jan Brokken’s work, which, as the jury’s motivation explains, represents “a journey of discovery into places not as sites of consumption but as landscape and cultural contexts that invite contemplation, and therefore awareness of the values – whether local or universal – that characterize them.”
A journey recounting the extraordinary artistic and literary intersections set against the small coastal village of Volendam between the late 19th and early 20th centuries: from Picasso to Kandinsky, from Signac to Joseph Beuys, and even Marcel Proust.
Almost immediate is the parallel with the visits to the Dolomites by artists and scientists who, since the late 18th century, helped generate that collective imagination which, consolidated and partly transformed over the following decades, ultimately supported the UNESCO’s recognition of the Outstanding Universal Value of the Dolomites.
Sublime beauty explored and represented
In older to flourish, every imagination also feeds on symbolic places that become legendary: “Just as in the spirit that animates this story, the Dolomites have always nourished the imagination of their inhabitants and visitors – from the first explorers to the artists who tried to represent the many facets of the Dolomites’ sublime beauty, to the scientists – particularly geologists – who made the La Nave d’Oro hotel in Pedrazzo a crossroads of science,” continues the jury’s motivation. “When, in the 18th century, Europe was witnessing both a renewed interest in natural sciences and a new aesthetic taste for the sublime, the Dolomites became object of study and admiration. Like the village of Volendam, the Dolomites – with their landscape value – have, over the centuries, captured imagination and inspired every type of artistic sensibility.”
This activity is part of the project “Capacity building. Strengthening the social and regional capital of the Dolomites World Heritage Site (WHS) for lasting and sustainable development of local communities”, established with the support of Fondo Comuni Confinanti.