Blog | Page 10 of 13 | World Heritage Sites

Ruins of a temple, with tall columns supporting ornate pediments.

Pergamon and its Multi-Layered Cultural Landscape

A collection of 9 archeological sites covering several historical periods of an important city’s grand monuments.

A reconstructed sod house has straight walls and a rounded roof.

L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site

The first proven European settlement in North America, established 1000 years ago in Newfoundland.

A sloped landscape with a scattering of ruins: a well is visible, and a small building, as well as foundations of more buildings and some retaining walls at Troy Archaeological Site.

Archaeological Site of Troy

Excavation of the ancient Greek city of Troy, site of the Trojan War.

The hall is large, with a row of pillars down the center and tall arched windows on either side. the pillars support a ceiling with gothic arches.

Maulbronn Monastery Complex

An intact and complete medieval monastery that demonstrates the transition from Romanesque to Gothic architecture.

A white mosque with gray domes and very tall slender minarets. Beside it is a structure that looks like a castle's keep, round with crenellations around the top.

Historic Cairo

A collection of more than 800(!) structures – a fortress, religious sites, houses, cemeteries and many more – dating from about 100 AD until the 18th century.

Val d’Orcia

A beautiful agrarian landscape reflecting a Renaissance aesthetic.

Vinales Valley: a bush in the foreground with bright red flowers, behind that the green floor of the valley, and beyond that, the dome-shaped karst mountains, also covered in green.

Viñales Valley

A green landscape of traditional agriculture and colonial-style architecture surrounded by dramatic karst domes.

A big view of mountains with snow in the sheltered parts against a cloudy sky in Glacier National Park.

Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park

Spectacular scenery and a showcase for the importance of international cooperation in protecting our planet’s wilderness.

Vlkolínec

A well-preserved rural mountain village with traditional wooden architecture.

A view of the Piazza del Plebiscito, with its elegant porticos, in the historic center of Naples.

Historic Centre of Naples

An ancient Italian city containing a wealth of elements – architecture, art, archeology – displaying its long history.

In Vilnius historic center, a street view with what look like medieval era residential buildings along the street, painted in pastels. In the distance a church spire in Baroque style is visible.

Vilnius Historic Centre

An Eastern European city center with its original medieval street layout and architectural forms spanning centuries.

A view from the land over a section of the Amalfi Coast: clusters of houses on steep hills that drop into the sea.

Costiera Amalfitana (Amalfi Coast)

A scenic and dramatic landscape of rugged mountainous coastline and small towns crowding the slopes above the sea.

White buildings around a plaza in Quito, Ecuador. They have decorative moldings around windos and doors, and the one in the center of the photo, the corner of the plaza, is higher than most at about 5 stories.

City of Quito

A South American city with an extremely well-preserved center and beautiful examples of the “Baroque school of Quito.”

Mount Kenya: A mountain peak, rocky and steep, with clouds around its top.

Mount Kenya National Park/Natural Forest

A mountain and two nature preserves, home to a wide diversity of landscapes and species.

Convent of Christ in Tomar

An architectural retrospective of Portugal and the Knights Templar in the form of a monastic center dating to the 12th-16th century.

Su Nuraxi di Barumini

Ruins of a Bronze Age society that built unique circular defensive structures.

The front of the cathedral in Modena, with typical Romanesque rounded arches above the entry door and upper windows.

Cathedral, Torre Civica and Piazza Grande, Modena

Romanesque architecture and art in harmony, in a charming Italian city.

Delos

Extensive archeological site of an ancient Greek commercial center on an Aegean island.

A view down on the lower city from a city wall in Luxembourg: below are pretty smaller buildings as well as a simple church.

City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and Fortifications

Impressive fortifications and the original urban center of a historically important city.

Van Nellefabriek

A masterpiece of modernist industrial design from the inter-war period.

A huge empty market square in Krakow, Poland. At the far end is a tall square tower.

Historic Centre of Kraków

An important market town for hundreds of years and an outstanding example of urban planning, with a range of historical architectural styles.

View over the old town of Dubrovnik: lots of red roofs and the blue sea beyond that.

Old City of Dubrovnik

A well-preserved medieval, Renaissance and Baroque city inside extensive intact fortifications.

At Portobelo, and entrance gateway: The arch stands, and some walls, but in very bad condition.

Fortifications on the Caribbean Side of Panama: Portobelo-San Lorenzo

Ruins of Spanish colonial-era fortifications extending along the Caribbean coastline of Panama.

Mont-Saint-Michel appears as a pile of stone structures up a hill, forming a conical shape with a recognizably Gothic church spire at the top.

Mont-Saint-Michel and its bay

A magnificent Gothic abbey on top of a small island in a bay with dramatic tides.

A short length of street in Provins lined with medieval-period houses. The one on the left is half-timbered.

Provins, Town of Medieval Fairs

A beautifully intact example of a medieval trading city.

A round building with a semi-spherical green roof, surrounded by very precise formal gardens with low hedges and flowers.

Gardens and Castle at Kroměříž

A palace and three gardens, one of which represents the epitome of Baroque garden design.

In Lumbini, Nepal, a long white building with a railing around the roof and flags on the corners.

Lumbini, the Birthplace of the Lord Buddha

The holiest place in Buddhism, containing archeological evidence of Lumbini’s importance as a pilgrimage site.

My Son Sanctuary

Evocative ruins of Champa kingdom Hindu temples, elaborately carved, with brick towers.

A bridge leads to an arched gateway with a square tower next to it in Regensburg, Germany.

Old Town of Regensburg with Stadtamhof

A beautifully-preserved and very picturesque medieval trading city.

In the foreground, a church with a square bell tower. In the background, on a hill, the castle Castelgrande in Bellinzona. Beyond that, a higher mountain.

Three Castles, Defensive Wall and Ramparts of the Market-Town of Bellinzona

Medieval-era fortifications that once guarded a key strategic pass in the southern Alps.

Yellowstone National Park

A vast nature preserve hosting many species that once roamed North America, as well as a large number of active geothermal sites.

A church, relatively simple, with a peaked roof and a square tower to the side. It is mostly white plaster, with some light yellow columns next to the center entrance and light-yellow trim.

Historic Centre of Santa Cruz de Mompox

A Spanish colonial river port with a collection of authentic and well-preserved colonial-era churches and other buildings.

A view into a wide gorge - a river cut through the bottom, and low shrubs or grasses along both banks and up the sides of the gorge.

The Causses and the Cévennes, Mediterranean agro-pastoral Cultural Landscape

A rural landscape shaped by centuries of farming, where old agricultural techniques are still in use.

View from a height over a white sand beach in a bay, enclosed by land on either side. Turquoise blue water, a few scattered people..

Galápagos Islands

An archipelago that inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution and teems with wildlife found nowhere else.

Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak

A 4th-century tomb containing frescoes that are masterpieces of Hellenistic Thracia.

A view of Edinburgh castle, with a sunset sky behind it. The castle has an arched entryway and much higher walls behind the entry, with rounded walls and crenellations.

Old and New Towns of Edinburgh

A medieval Old Town and a neoclassical New Town that harmonize beautifully and that influenced European urban planning.