architecture

A view of the city from the water: market stalls along the pier, stone-built walls and buildings behind that, and a church tower peeking above the roofs.

Historic City of Trogir

A small city on an island showing influences from a succession of ruling powers.

A group of temples, each with a pointed roof, at Ayutthaya

Historic City of Ayutthaya

A 14th-18th century city that served as a seat of the Siamese royal court and whose art and architecture show international influences.

Two walls of the castle courtyard: brick with several stories and Romanesque arches.

Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork

A massive brick castle from an era of forced conversion to Christianity in eastern Europe.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

The Rietveld Schröderhuis is all flat surfaces in squares and rectangles. Two stories tall, made of concrete, painted in large areas of gray and white, with a few small vertical and horizontal elements in red and yellow. This view is from The front: a large white vertical panel in the center, a white horizontal panel on the left and grey on the right, large windows.

Rietveld Schröderhuis (Rietveld Schröder House)

A 1920s family house exemplifying the ideals of the De Stijl group of architects and artists.

A very elegant central entrance: stairs up to an arched doorway, a rose window above that, rows of statues on the ground floor and above the door, three square towers on top, all with detailed carved ornamentation. The rest of the building is much smaller and extends on both sides out of the picture, two stories tall with simple rows of windows.

Monastery of Alcobaça

A masterpiece of Gothic Cistercian art and architecture.

View along a cobbled street in Lyon, with a few arched storefronts in the foreground.

Historic Site of Lyon

A city with 2000 years of history visible in its urban center’s architecture.

A long building with a row of columns all along the front like a Greek temple. In front of it, a fountain.

Museumsinsel (Museum Island), Berlin

5 museums that demonstrate the evolution of museums and museum design.

View down a canal with a range of medieval-era buildings one either side.

Historic Centre of Brugge

A completely intact, mostly Gothic, core of a medieval trading city.

Looking down a long row of houses, all with about 4 stories, all painted in pastel colors, all with decorative gables and shops on the ground floor.

Historic Centers of Stralsund and Wismar

Remarkable collections of “Brick Gothic” churches and other buildings unique to these former Hanseatic ports.

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.

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.

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.