Wiki defines Erotic Art as “a broad field of the visual arts including any artistic work intended to evoke erotic arousal , usually depicting human nudity and/or sexual activity .” We’ve had a connection about it for a long time, bringing together WHS where examples of Erotic Art can be seen. Both “Erotic” and “Art” have to be taken broadly here: it includes what we now consider overtly sexual depictions or symbols, but weren’t necessarily seen as such when they were made. The Meaning of Erotic Art seems to be a popular study object, shown by the number of Wikipedia pages and scientific articles devoted to it. Using these sources, I have been able to add some additional sites to the existing connection and better describe the ones that were already there.

Prehistory

Erotic Art is of all times, and the earliest examples can be seen in Rock Art across the world. While Tsodilo ’s “Dancing Penises” may just be geometric designs, the Saharan sites of Tassili n'Ajjer and Tadrart Acacus hold numerous examples of explicit rock paintings. The artists specialized in depicting men with large or erect penises. <here is where I disappeared into …

Years ago we had a book section on this website. It fell victim to one of the many refurbishments, mostly because its content was quite static. However, books about UNESCO World Heritage Sites and the process around it keep on being published, and I have reviewed a number of them recently in blog posts. So I thought it would be a good idea to revive the “ Resources about WHS ” corner and extend it to include more contemporary media such as videos and podcasts.

Books

The Book section is an extension of the original listings from 2005. Recent notable additions include a new publication on India’s 38 WHS and an ethnographic study of the World Heritage arena. You can sort them by country or year of publication.

The selection will be limited to studies about the World Heritage Process, generic overviews of WHS in countries, or volumes by theme (such as forests, coastal sites). It does not include site-specific books without a WH angle – it would be too much to include every book ever made about the Colosseum for example. It's also not meant to be an all-encompassing inventory, you can do …

The Serra de Tramuntana is a beautiful landscape with steep mountainsides and lots of greenery. Like the rest of Mallorca, it is quite tourist trappy - so expect no lost paradise. An easy way to get to know the area is to take bus 203 from Palma. This is the ‘slow’ bus, that reaches the coastal town of Port de Soller after 1h20 min. It passes through the mountain villages of Valldemossa and Deia, and crosses large parts of the Serra de Tramuntana. These are narrow mountain roads, where two buses cannot pass each other. The stone villages seem glued to the steep mountain walls, that are so characteristic of this area. Near the coast, you can see dramatic cliffs.

The Serra is popular for hiking, even attracting long-distance hikers for a long weekend trip from Northern Europe. Since there are many daily flights from anywhere in Europe to Palma de Mallorca it is very accessible; from Palma it takes only 45 minutes by direct bus and then you are in the middle of this mountainous region. Crossing the mountain range on foot from west to east via the GR221 “Dry Stone Route” takes …

Iraq’s WHS have seriously been underreviewed at this website: Ashur and Babylon so far had none, Samarra showed one visit from 1975, and Hatra had only reports by 2 US military personnel. While Iraqi Kurdistan has been easily accessible for the past 10 years or so, Iraq “proper” is now opening up more as well, aided by the introduction of a visa-on-arrival for nationals of 38 countries . The area around Baghdad is deemed safe enough, but what about the ancient cities around Mosul? Wojciech Fedoruk and Thomas Buechler put WH travel in Iraq to the test a few weeks ago. They've written reviews of the sites they managed to visit (spoiler alert: they reached all 6!) and share more stories below.

What’s the most efficient itinerary along Iraq’s 6 WHS?

Wojciech: “I planned to cover all Iraqi WHS within 7 days and it worked very well. It is recommended to start from Iraq ‘proper’: a visa issued in Baghdad is respected in Kurdistan, but the one issued in Kurdistan is valid only there, so you’d have to pay twice:

• Day one – early arrival at Baghdad airport, taxi to Babylon WHS , then to Ur - part of Ahwar …

Talayotic Minorca is Spain's submission for 2022. The revised documents are now available from the excellent nomination website . They’ve even added an Epic Subtitle : “Talayotic Menorca - A cyclopean island odyssey”. The 25 locations have been decreased to 9, but that’s just a cosmetic adjustment as the former locations are now bundled into clusters. Only the Torre del Ram near Ciutadella has not survived the cut. As far as I can see all suggestions made by ICOMOS during the Deferral of 2017 have been incorporated. All but one that is: the Necropolis at Son Real on the neighboring island of Mallorca has not been included. The Minorcans seem to want a WHS all for themselves! The process has cost 1 million EUR already.

None of the sites lie particularly convenient to be explored by public transport. The best ones for that would be Trepuco (cluster 8), about 3km from the nearest bus stop in Mahon, and Torralba d’en Salort (cluster 6) which lies about 4km from Alaior. One could also take a taxi to one of the sites and then walk back. Menorcaarqueologica does offer guided hiking along some of the sites with …

In memory of my recent trip to Kyrgyzstan , I decided to pimp up our Silk Road connection . We gathered no less than 51 connected sites over the years, most of them lacking proper explanations. However, when I tried to apply a structured approach to it I failed miserably. I got lost in the muddy waters of scientific definitions, ancient legends, and modern tourism marketing surrounding the ‘Silk Roads’ brand. So my goal became to make sense of it all, explain more, and judge less. The updated connection contains 69 WHS.

The issues

Finding the ultimate resource for this ‘WHS and Silk Road’ subject was already a quest. I started with the ICOMOS thematic study dating from 2014. However, it also struggled with setting boundaries and took a narrow approach to end up near its own goal (find a subdivision of Silk Road Sites for serial nominations). On the other side of the spectrum is the UNESCO Silk Roads Programme: a broad initiative where it seems that if you think you belong here, you can join. Of great help was this older Silk Road topic at our Forum. I also …

The restrictions that came with the Covid pandemic have forced the travel blog community almost to a standstill. Most bloggers fell silent altogether, some started writing about places in their immediate surroundings (“20 Fun Things to do in Utrecht”), others have used the focus time for writing a book. One of the latter is Australian Michael Turtle , who is active in this WH community as well (currently ranked #96). He has just published a book called: Great World Wonders: 100 Remarkable World Heritage Sites .

How it looks

I bought the hardcover version, which at 282 pages and a 26x20cm size felt like receiving a brick of stone when delivered.

The 100 featured WHS are grouped by themes, which are somewhere in between our categories and connections . They include for example “Homes of the rich and famous”, "Science and Technology" and “At the movies”.

Each selected WHS has its own 2 pages of dedicated content: a textual description of about 400 words, accompanied by 3 to 5 photos. These introductions are mostly of a generic kind and rarely refer to the author’s experiences at the …

In his recent review of the Wieliczka and Bochnia Royal Salt Mines , Nan openly wondered how the (below average) Bochnia ended up with (in his opinion, the most unique site of Poland) Wieliczka. He concludes “Frankly, the extension was an error as it dilutes the OUV.” Jonathan had sent me a whole bunch of similar questionable extensions already a while ago, but I left them in my mailbox to further ponder the subject. At what point does an extension actually make a WHS worse? I guess there are at least two ways an extension can "dilute" the original WHS: by devaluating its overall OUV, or by pushing the original, iconic site into the background.

Those that brought the average quality down

Several extensions brought the overall quality of the WHS down or did not show clear OUV on their own. This issue mostly seems to have occurred when a single, outstanding monument was extended with one or more others (in a move away from the “monument” thinking of the early years). Whether the extension did not add anything is up for debate of course. I checked the reviews of the extended WHS to see …

Zos M. , originally from the Philippines, started counting WHS since he relocated to Beijing in 2016 for work. Before the pandemic, he mostly used his vacation leaves for visits to Europe and Asia, but from 2020 on China was his focus. In October 2021, setting foot in Qinghai Hoh Xil , he “completed” China. That means that he has visited all its 56 WHS – a significant accomplishment as a foreigner with limited knowledge of the language. He has also been to about half of the country's 59 TWHS. Meet Zos below, while he shares his experiences as a WH Traveller in China.

How difficult is it to visit all of China’s WHS?

"At first, it was difficult. Not because of the inaccessibility of the sites but of my non-existent Mandarin. From 2016 to 2018, I only visited sites which are near big cities (Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, and Hangzhou). It was easier to find transportation. Then Didi and ridesharing and translator apps came along. It was easier. I could go to remote places. I could follow the bus routes and get off at the correct stop.

Like Europe, China is well connected. Most of the sites are within 2 …

In September 2021 I spent 2 weeks in Kyrgyzstan. I used public transport to travel around for 10 days and hired a car+driver for the remaining 5 to bring me to the more remote places. I found a country with relaxed and hospitable inhabitants. Especially the north still feels very Russian-Communist, maybe even more so than many cities in Russia nowadays. Find below my Top Tips for Travelling to Kyrgyzstan as a World Heritage Traveller.

1. Treat it on its own merits

When you look online for trip reports about Kyrgyzstan, you’ll quickly notice that most people give it only a day or 5 during a more comprehensive Central Asia trip. They rarely venture beyond the capital Bishkek and the Issyk-Kul lake. Even at this website, we are guilty of that – at the Forum, Kyrgyzstan has to share its country topic with Kazakhstan , as if the two were one entity. But a lot of Kyrgyzstan’s beauty starts when you take the road southwards from Bishkek, via the Camel Pass, encounter the herds of horses/cows/sheep, see the yurts at the green meadows of the Suusamyr valley, and end up near the mountains of Western Tienshan and the walnut forests …