history Archives | Page 7 of 9 | World Heritage Sites

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.

Val d’Orcia

A beautiful agrarian landscape reflecting a Renaissance aesthetic.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Two large arches in the center serve as the gateway. Two floors above lined with arched windows, an extra floor forms a short tower on the left side of the gateway. The whole is made of carved stone that looks dirty.

Roman Monuments, Cathedral of St Peter and Church of Our Lady in Trier

A collection of Roman ruins showing the importance of the “Rome of the North” in Germany.

Facing the altar, with some of the side walls and arched ceiling visible. Every inch is ornately decorated with religious and natural imageray, as well as architectural features like arches and such. Literally all of it is covered in gold.

Historic Town of Ouro Preto

City of Black Gold and treasury of baroque and Portuguese colonial architecture.

A row of four enormous statues, seen from the side, guard the entranceways to the temple. Each has its arms crossed across its chest and each has a long straight beard.

Ancient Thebes with its Necropolis

Extensive temples and tombs that illuminate the history of ancient Egyptian civilization in architecture, art and text.