In its World Heritage Convention of 1972 UNESCO took on the task of cataloguing cultural achievements and natural phenomena as testimony to the history of mankind and nature and to contribute to their preservation. In June 2002, Germany's Upper Middle Rhine Valley was added to the list of World Heritage Sites (754 in January 2004) for its exceptional universal value, having it represent the Rhine River in its entirety because this section is most widely known.

The valley encompasses a beautiful 40-mile (65 km) stretch of river landscape between Bingen and Rüdesheim in the south and Coblence in the north.

 
UNESCO has acknowledged the great diversity and beauty of this valley as a 'cultural landscape'. It is now considered part of the human heritage as are the Pyramids of El Gîza, the Palace of Versailles, the historic inner city of Lübeck, or the Galapagos Islands.

This World Heritage Site owes its particular appearance to the natural shape of a river landscape and to man's intervention. Tribute is also paid to the impact of the River Rhine, which, for the better part of two centuries, has been one of the major transport arteries, promoting cultural interchange between the Mediterranean and northern Europe.

The designated cultural landscape in the Upper Middle Rhine Valley encompasses that part of the valley that penetrates the 'Rheinisches Schiefergebirge', the schistose mountain range cut by the Rhine.

Close to the heart of the European continent, serving alternately as a boundary or as a bridge between different cultures, it is the paradigm for the history of the Western World. The Upper Middle Rhine Valley features superior constructions of momentous impact that are unique in Europe both in terms of their numbers as well as their concentration.

The valley is considered the epitome of the romantic Rhineland thanks to a number of features. Here there are its sloping hillsides where wine growing still prevails and at the bottom of which quaint villages and towns are picturesquely perched on the narrow ledges along the river's banks and crowded around the mouths and banks of the Rhine's tributaries and side valleys. But there are also the spurs of mid-river terraces on which numerous castles sit upon high cliffs like a row of pearls on a string. Over the years, travellers from almost every continent and country have visited this valley of outstanding beauty, renowned and immortalised in the works of literati, painters, and musicians.

Cutting deeply into the countryside and protected by the mountainous ridges of the Hunsrück range, the Upper Middle Rhine Valley is a natural environment, blessed with a favourable climate. In fact, the valley even provides a habitat for plant and animal populations that normally occur in the milder regions of the Mediterranean and southeastern Europe.