Switzerland · Stone conservation; Medieval heritage; Vaud heritage
Conservation du Château de Chillon
The conservation of Château de Chillon — the island castle on Lake Geneva near Montreux, the most visited historic monument in Switzerland, built from the 12th century onward on a rocky island using locally quarried lacustrine molasse (a specific soft sedimentary stone from the Lake Geneva basin). The conservation applies the same percussion hardness assessment as the Porta Nigra (CRAFT-1213) and the Bremen Roland (CRAFT-1230), here calibrated to the specific softness and salt-damp weathering of molasse lacustre — which weathers fundamentally differently from the harder triassic sandstones of the German conservation records.
Risk level: Stable · Not listed as ICH; Château de Chillon is on the Swiss national heritage list of highest significance
The sgraffito house decoration tradition of the Engadin valley — the technique of applying two or more layers of differently colored lime plaster and incising a design through the upper layer to reveal the lower, producing the…
The conservation of the painted churches (oratori) of Canton Ticino — a remarkable concentration of medieval and Renaissance fresco programs in the small rural chapels of the Ticino valleys, painted by the same Lombard and Ticinese master…
The conservation of the Carolingian frescos at the Convent of St.
The making of Bündnerfleisch (Grisons dried beef) — the air-dried cured beef that is the defining preserved meat of Canton Graubünden, produced by salting, spice-curing, and air-drying beef in the specific Alpine wind and temperature…
The wine making tradition of Valposchiavo — the southernmost valley of Canton Graubünden, which opens southward into the Valtellina (Italy) and where the Italian Nebbiolo grape is cultivated at some of the highest altitudes in Europe…
The stone tile roofing tradition of Canton Ticino — the use of Piode (large flat stone tiles split from mica-schist or serpentinite) to create the characteristic heavy, dark stone roofs of the historic Ticino villages that define the…
The quarrying, cutting, and carving of onyx marble into decorative and functional objects — candle holders, ashtrays, bookends, animal figures, table lamps, and jewelry — centered in La Toma, San Luis province, where the craft is…
At the base of Marble Mountain (Ngu Hanh Son) near Da Nang, a stone carving tradition has been active since the 17th century — originating from Cham kingdom devotional stone sculpture practice and continuing through Vietnamese Buddhist and…
The mining, lapidary cutting, and jewelry-setting of opal from Pedro II, a municipality in northern Piauí that holds Brazil's and the Americas' only reserve of noble (precious) opal — the world's second largest such deposit after…
The contemporary Angkor replica stone carving workshops of Siem Reap represent a distinct tradition from the APSARA-controlled restoration carving (CRAFT-0509) — a commercial workshop tradition producing Angkor-style relief carvings in…
Chinese jade carving — particularly of Hetian (Hotan) nephrite from Xinjiang — is the most continuous luxury craft tradition in human history, with documented production spanning 8,000 years.
The amber rosary making tradition of Gdańsk — the threading of Baltic amber beads into Roman Catholic rosaries, a tradition that combines the Gdańsk amber working heritage (CRAFT-1364) with the specific requirements of rosary bead size…