Just last week, a book has been published about the destruction of cultural heritage, with a large focus on the fate of WHS in this regard. “ Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities ” is a collection of 32 essays, compiled by James Cuno from the Getty Trust and international relations scholar Thomas G. Weiss . It addresses the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage in conflict, which has gained notoriety during the past decades in Mostar , Bamiyan and Palmyra . Its book cover shows “before” and “after” photos of the Great Mosque of Aleppo .

Memorable essays

The essays were all written recently (late 2021), which I found refreshing as they take into account developments such as the retaking of power by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Ethiopian army’s actions in Tigray. The authors come from a broad spectrum, consisting of academics with backgrounds ranging from Guatemalan Maya to West Point Military Academy. Still, there is no Russian, Chinese, Saudi, Japanese, Turk, or Brazilian among them (to name a few players with a different view of the world than is common at UK/US universities).

The most notable among the essays I found:

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Patmos I found the prettiest of the Greek-islands-with-a-WHS. It does particularly well on ‘views’: of the blue sea and the surrounding islands, of that little chapel against the blue sky, of its obligatory row of windmills. The three components of its WHS also look well cared for. Like the other islands, Patmos does see its fair share of cruise ships, anchoring in the bay outside of the harbour: in 2022, no less than 285 of them will arrive . Overall, I encountered many more 'regular' tourists than pilgrims, which took away a bit of the holy atmosphere of the island.

When you arrive at Patmos from the sea (there is no airport), you’ll immediately notice the large fortress on top of the highest mountain on the island. What looks like a castle is in reality the Monastery of St. John. It was only half past 11 when the boat delivered me, way too early to check in at the hotel. So I had a first look at the WHS. About once an hour there is a bus from the port town of Skala to Chora, the old town where the monastery is also located. The …

Zagori and the Pindos mountains will be Greece’s nomination for 2023. It will be a shoo-in, I can already see ICOMOS drooling over features such as “traditional villages with vernacular architecture” and “bridges sponsored by wealthy merchants”. It’s a wonderful site to visit as well: this is a region in Northern Greece that for long has been a well-kept secret within the hiking community. It will be a mixed proposal, combining the cultural features of Zagori with the Pindos Mountains. Northern Pindos National Park is a UNESCO Global Geopark already, so it’s well-protected and has an abundance of information panels both on the area’s geology, plants, and fauna as well as on its villages.

I stayed in the area for 2 nights, exploring it by rental car from a guesthouse in a traditional home in Asprangeloi. On the first day, I focused on the northwest of the region, and on the second day on the southeast. Although the distances are short, the driving takes a lot of time because of the winding, minor roads. The roads were never too narrow though and there is little traffic, so it was fun to drive.

I started …

So this will be the first review of a visit to Mount Athos by a woman! Although a couple of females have succeeded in entering in the past, I didn’t risk trespassing as I still needed to visit 4 more Greek WHS afterwards. I stayed overnight in the nearest town, Ouranoupoli. It lies about 3km from the guarded border with Oros Athos, where the monastic community enjoys autonomous self-government within Greece. The pleasant town has a few memorabilia stores, the pilgrim’s office and furthermore a lot of shops and restaurants geared to the generic beach tourist.

My day started at ease in my hotel room behind my laptop, answering questions about Obelisks , as my boat tour along the coast of the Athos peninsula was only to leave at 11 a.m. But there was that monastery near Ouranoupoli that I had seen on the map: the Holy Monastery of Zygos . It turned out to be the ruins of one of the original Athos monasteries, within touching distance of the border. It would be a 30-minute walk from Ouranoupoli’s city center, but I only had 25 minutes at best for each way. Could I still make …

In what probably will be my last big effort this year to structurally improve the website, I took on the country pages last week. They always have been far less information-dense than the individual site pages, but I see them as essential landing pages. These are the pages to start from when preparing a WHS-focused trip, to get answers to questions like where are its WHS located, what is their nomination roadmap, and what itineraries were used by other community members. Below is what I changed in the content and structure of the country pages.

States Parties

In the WH lingo, countries are known as States Parties : ”countries which have adhered to the World Heritage Convention”. 194 states so far ratified this convention. I have now also added to the website an additional 4 countries which did ratify but are not active yet. They are Brunei , the Cook Islands , Niue , and Somalia .

This Missing Countries topic on the Forum gives an excellent overview of the discrepancies between what is considered a country by the different UN bodies, and what the activity level of a country is concerning WHS. It …

I am preparing 4 trips simultaneously at the moment, doing my homework for the final 4 months of this year. One of these trips is a return visit to Rome. It is organized by people I know from my Art History studies – so I do not have to do any practical planning and can just follow someone else’s lead for once! I did my usual website preparation though, going through the connections and adding new explanations where necessary. Regarding Rome, the Obelisks stood out to me: apparently, the city is home to no less than eight ancient Egyptian and five ancient Roman obelisks.

An obelisk is a very specific kind of monument: four-sided, narrow tapering, ending in a pyramid-like shape at the top. The updated connection list now shows 30 WHS with obelisks within their core zones. Despite their considerable size, obelisks seem to have been moved around a lot!

Ancient obelisks

The Ancient Egyptians ‘invented’ the obelisk, so any history should start with them. Ancient Thebes still has one standing on the left-hand side of the portal of the Luxor Temple. It dates from the reign of Ramesses II (c. 1250 BC). …

In my experience, even after having covered the WHS of a continent well, there are always those annoying little islands left at the fringes to ‘tick’. In Europe for example, I am missing St. Kilda , the Vega Islands , and even Risco Caido on Gran Canaria! Skellig Michael has also been a nagging thorn in my side for years, after missing out due to bad weather on my first try in 2019. On August 12, 2022, my second attempt was succesful. This WHS has been closed a lot over the past 2.5 years, so I think it’s worthwhile to share some up-to-date visitor information in addition to my personal experience.

How and when to visit

There are at least 3 ways to get a look at the island:

1. From a distance: from the Kerry Cliffs (4 EUR entrance) or the viewpoint just outside of St. Finian’s Bay (free) you can see it, although it lies still some 10km away. I did this in 2019, and with the help of my superzoom lens and a little post-processing, I managed to take this shot of Skellig Michael. I did not count this as a …

In the past week, it was all over the news that the DRC government has opened parts of Virunga WHS up (again) for oil and gas exploration. Simultaneously, I was prepping for my upcoming Chad trip and discovered that the Ennedi nomination had been significantly reduced in size to carve out an area for oil exploration just before nomination (much to the frustration of ICOMOS and IUCN). Surprisingly, in our ‘ Damaged ’ series of connections, we did not have a connection yet for World Heritage Sites Threatened by Oil and Gas Exploration (though we have Oil Spill ). So I decided to create one.

A structured approach to finding these sites proved to be difficult. A search for “oil” on the UNESCO website brought me to 47 sites with “Soil” and similar words in their description. You’d want to do a full-text search on all documents, not only on the website text, but this feature is not available. A query through our “News Links” brought in a few more, as did a search in the State of Conservation (SOC) and IUCN outlook reports. None of the sites seemed to have been put in danger from …

Jonathanfr asked a while ago on the Forum whether we could have a Connection called “Perfect inscriptions”. 'Perfect' meaning: a recommendation of inscription by the advisory body, then inscribed at the first attempt . I was afraid sites like this would be too common to justify a connection, but as we have all the data anyway (thanks to crawling through all available official documentation in the past by some community members) I crafted a query for it to see what the outcome would be.

The process

I queried our database on the data displayed on the site pages under “Site History”. To determine perfect status, I excluded sites that have either been Referred, Deferred, Rejected or got an Advisory Body Overruled in their history before Inscription. I did so too with sites that got a Conditional inscription, sites where an Incomplete dossier has been submitted and sites where the State Party had requested it to not be Examined (often a move to avert a negative conclusion).

I ended up with 790 of the current WHS where the nomination process can be seen as Perfect. That’s 68% of them all! The list includes major sites such as Machu …

While prepping for my upcoming trip to Greece, I updated the connections of the WHS I am about to visit as I always do. Common among the Greek WHS is a connection called Byzantine Empire and Civilization . At 57 sites, it’s long and most entries didn’t have an explanation. I added them and started wondering about what ‘Byzantine’ really means. It’s a term that is easily used, I think we all have an image in our mind of what Byzantine architecture (domed churches) or Byzantine mosaics and murals (lots of gold) look like. But which are the best and most typical examples?

Political Byzantine

The Byzantine Empire spanned about 11 centuries, governing constantly changing parts of South Eastern Europe and the Levant from Constantinople. So several WHS that derive their OUV from a different culture, ended up being part of the Byzantine Empire at some time. The Byzantines didn’t have much influence here. However, they might still be named in overhyped statements like “ruled successively by the Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and the Order of the Knights of St John”. Examples are Damascus (Umayyad), Ani (Armenian), and Valletta (Crusader Knights).

Byzantine …