history

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.

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.

Sulaiman-Too Sacred Mountain

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

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.

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 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 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 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.

An exterior view of the Plantin-Moretus Museum's courtyard: red brick, 2-3 stories high, with 2 gables visible, and a portico along the ground floor.

Plantin-Moretus House-Workshops-Museum Complex

300 years of printing history and domestic life, with art by Rubens.

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.

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.

Part of the "palace" complex shows 3 buildings, one story, built of stone, standing on a a stepped platform, also of stone.

Pre-Hispanic City and National Park of Palenque

Mayan ruins, outstanding particularly because of their well-preserved architecture and elegant art.

Rapa Nui National Park

Also known as Easter Island, famous for its huge stone statues of human heads.

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.

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.

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.