Blog | Page 9 of 14 | World Heritage Sites

View of the Old Bridge in Mostar: a high, wide arch, far above the water level of the river below.

Old Bridge Area of the Old City of Mostar

Significant not for its history, but for the symbolism of its restoration.

The grand entranceway to a fort: very ornate detail on and around the arches.

Hill Forts of Rajasthan

Six ornate and unique forts, legacies of the Princely Rajput states.

View over the old city of Split: low buildings with red roofs, one very tall white tower.

Historical Complex of Split with the Palace of Diocletian

A complete architectural ensemble built around the well-preserved ruins of a large palace complex.

Historic Centre of Warsaw

An outstanding near-total reconstruction of a centuries-old historic city center.

View from above of several tulou against a backdrop of mountains.

Fujian Tulou

Multi-family inward-facing houses built by the Hakka minority and still used to this day.

A large gateway, arched, with decorative elements both around and under the arch.

Fatehpur Sikri

An ancient city that is a masterpiece of Mughal architecture.

Baroque towers on the Abbey's cathedral.

Abbey of St. Gall

An 8th-century monastery with a beautiful Baroque cathedral and an ancient library.

The glacier flows between rocky peaks, looking like a river covered in snow.

Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch

A spectacular mountain and glacier landscape in the Alps.

A grand building, with pillars across its entrance and a dome in its center, with a statue in front.

Budapest, including the Banks of the Danube, the Buda Castle Quarter and Andrássy Avenue

Significant because of its urban landscape and influence on European architecture.

Kilimanjaro National Park

A spectacular nature preserve centered around Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa.

A view along the water with some white colonial buildings in the distance and a lighthouse beyond them.

Old Town of Galle and its Fortifications

A charming and well-preserved colonial fortified city in Sri Lanka.

View of the extensive ruin of Fountains Abbey at Studley Park.

Studley Royal Park including the ruins of Fountains Abbey

A beautifully-landscaped Georgian garden and a well-preserved medieval monastic ruin.

People walk a path through low shrubs toward a green mountain in the background.

Gros Morne National Park

An area of natural beauty which illustrates the process of continental drift.

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

Two active volcanoes and a protected habitat for endemic flora and fauna.

Sulaiman-Too Sacred Mountain

A small mountain with a very long history as a sacred site.

Two parallel small canals/ditches in the Beemster Polder, with a strip of field between them, a fence across the near end of it. Trees on either side.

Droogmakerij de Beemster (Beemster Polder)

A landscape exemplifying creative Dutch land reclamation.

Gently rolling hills covered with rows of grapevines, very green, and a small village on one of the hills with a tall church spire.

Le Colline del Prosecco di Conegliano e Valdobbiadene

A uniquely beautiful landscape of hills and valleys, with vineyards and wineries producing world-famous Prosecco wines.

A view of Český Krumlov Castle with the red roofs of the town in front of it. The castle is very large and has a round tower rising quite high above it.

Historic Center of Český Krumlov

An intact and very charming medieval city surrounding a large 13th-century castle with Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque elements.

View of Valtice Castle: white stone, about 4 stories tall and symmetrical, with a small tower over an ornate central archway and wings extending forward on both sides of the central archway. In front, a round fountain.

Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape

Two castles and the extensive grounds, gardens and outbuildings around them form a harmonious man-made cultural landscape.

Harlech castle, in this view, has two round corner towers still more or less intact, and the wall between them too, with a doorway and two rows of windows above that.

Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd

Four castles in Wales, fine examples of medieval defensive architecture, all built under orders of King Edward I.

The castle and its walls of stone, perched dramatically on a small peak, with a huge view in the distance.

San Marino Historic Centre and Mount Titano

The world’s oldest republic, a tiny surviving city-state on a mountain surrounded by Italy.

A pretty red-painted colonial building: one story, with a triangular pediment over the central entrance. Above the pediment, a tall tower, almost as tall as the building is long, with a clock halfway up and a domed top.

Historic Bridgetown and its Garrison

A city and military complex that exemplify Caribbean cities of the British colonial period in terms of their architecture and layout.

A view down onto a barren landscape with at least two craters visible, and a peak beyond them.

Mount Etna

An ancient and still active volcano, influential in the sciences of volcanology and geology.

The church is primarily rectangular shapes, with no high church tower, but all of the edges - the roof lines and the windows - are embellished with detailed gothic-style stone lacework.

Monastery of Batalha

A well-preserved and impressive masterpiece of Late Flamboyant Gothic architecture with Manueline Baroque elements.

People at the bottom of the photo look up at the large waterfall behind them which fills the rest of the picture.

Jiuzhaigou Valley Scenic and Historic Interest Area

A spectacular landscape of karst landforms, lakes and waterfalls, home to a range of endangered species.

A cluster of red earth buildings with few windows, on the side of a hill. Decorative features carved around the tops of the buildings. Above them, on top of the hill, stone walls of a fortress.

Ksar of Ait-Ben-Haddou

A largely intact earthen fortified village that lends insight into traditional Moroccan life.

A stone bridge across a river, made of 3 rows of Romanesque arches. The bottom and middle rows are quite large arches; the top row has more arches and they're considerably smaller.

Pont du Gard (Roman Aqueduct)

A 3-tiered stone aqueduct and bridge that demonstrates Roman-era construction processes.

In a museum, on a small stand, a carved statue of a cow or ox. It's quite detailed in terms of the muscles that show, and the animal's face. It is missing two legs.

Archaeological Site of Olympia

Ruins of an important temple complex dedicated to Zeus, and the site of the first Olympic games.

Below where this photo was shot is a line of large statues of saints along the edge of the church's roof. Beyond that is Saint Peter's square, which is round, with pillared colonnades around the sides, except the far section which is open to a straight boulevard. The city of Rome spreads very far in the distance.

Vatican City

A tiny city-state with a long history at the center of the Catholic Church and containing magnificent works of art and architecture.

A small fishing boat in Ha Long Bay, in front of two islands connected by a small stretch of sand. Between them more sea is visible.

Ha Long Bay – Cat Ba Archipelago

A stunning natural landscape and seascape of tall limestone pillars and islands.

A large flat-sided rock outcropping with a clearly visible drawing of an antelope of some sort on the left - it must be quite big given the distance to the stone - and a somewhat less clear image on the right, also of an antelope. At Tsodilo Hills in Botswana.

Tsodilo

Rock formations bearing a huge collection of petroglyphs spanning thousands of years.

A view from the North rim of the Grand Canyon: trees and bushes in the foreground, then a big view of the canyon, with its carved horizontal layers of reddish rock.

Grand Canyon National Park

A vast gorge cut over the ages by the Colorado River, revealing 2 billion years of geologic history.

A view along the Seine seen from one bank. Below, lower than street level, is a bank with 2 rows of cafe tables capped with umbrellas. Between the cafe tables and the water is a path with people walking and biking, and a railing along the water. A tourist boat passes under a bridge over the river.

Paris, Banks of the Seine

A 365-hectare corridor that encompasses many of the most famous sights in Paris, spanning centuries of the city’s development.

The classic view of the Machu Picchu ruins: On a ridge that ends in a sharp peak, the steep walls of what was the citadel form terraces in the steep sides of the ridge. On a small flat area along the top of the ridge, the ruins of buildings.

Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu

Evocative Incan ruins in a magnificent mountainous setting.

A view toward the sea from El Morro shows the extreme thickness of the defensive wall.

La Fortaleza and San Juan National Historic Site in Puerto Rico

Colonial-era structures that demonstrate defensive architecture as it was adapted from European designs for a tropical environment.

Persepolis

Ruins of what was a magnificent palace complex over 2000 years ago, capital of the Achaemenid Empire.