The first fully online WHC meeting, officially hosted by China in Fuzhou, went about quite smoothly. Even the logistical hurdle of a secret ballot had been foreseen: a representative of each WHC member state had come to the UNESCO office in Paris in person at a certain time to vote. The voting papers would only be handed out on the spot. Two secret ballots were held (on the delisting of Liverpool and the inscription of the Danube Limes). Members succeeded in handing in invalid votes anyway.

34 new sites were selected in this extended session that covered both the nominations of 2020 (postponed due to Covid) and 2021. Find below some aspects that warrant a closer look.

The prize WHS for the host: Quanzhou

1. Missing WHS

From our Missing List , we only saw the inscription of the Scrovegni Chapel as part of the Padua’s fourteenth-century fresco cycles and Korea’s Tidal Flats .

2. The third delisting in history

For the first time since the axing of Dresden in 2009, another site has been removed from the World Heritage List. Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City was the victim, due to “serious deterioration and irreversible loss of attributes conveying the …

I was badly in need of a weekend trip to Italy after 1.5 years of drought on that usually enjoyable travel front. I had hoped for a positive evaluation of Bologna for the 2020/2021 WHC session, as the university city itself appealed to me (the Porticoes not so much). But that wasn’t the case and I turned instead to the Prosecco Hills, my last remaining ‘tick’ in Italy. The Prosecco Hills lie in the foothills of the Alps. So far up north this isn’t the elegant, bright, artistic and life-loving Italy anymore. It’s more like an Austrian/German farmers’ region, with restaurant menu’s heavy on game meat.

I stayed overnight in the city of Vittorio Veneto, easy to reach by train from Venice. It lies directly to the northeast of the inscribed area of the Prosecco Hills. Which leads me to point out the terrible quality of the map belonging to this WHS. Only when you zoom in to the max and have great eyes, you’ll know what is inscribed and what isn’t.

For my WHS visit I took a bus to Follina, some 25km further along road SP635/SP4 a.k.a. the “Strada del Prosecco”. Bus 117 …

At an about 45-minute drive south of Plovdiv, in the pretty Rhodope Mountains, lies the Monastery of Bachkovo . With origins in the 11th century, it is one of the oldest still active monasteries of the Balkan. It is a popular one as well: the site is already well signposted from the main road and there is a large paid car park. The last part of the road to the monastery, which lies - as it should be – on a hill, is flanked on either side by rows of souvenir and food stalls.

The monastery comprises a large complex, most of the places of interest lie within a walled compound. It is best known for its murals. The entrance is free, but I did buy an audio guide in English for 6 Lev (3 EUR) to learn more about its history and features. You can play the guide from your own phone. I had to do some mime to depict “audioguide” to the Bulgarian-only ladies in the monastery shop, who were much more confident in selling candles and postcards.

I started my sightseeing at the cathedral in the center of the main courtyard. Its …

The Mosaics of Philippopolis comprise three former Roman and early Christian structures with well-preserved mosaic floors in Bulgaria’s second city, Plovdiv. I had a pleasant two-night stay in modern Plovdiv; it has a more oriental and less Sovietesque feel than other Bulgarian towns. Because I travelled with a rental car I stayed overnight in a hotel in the outskirts, at the other end of the ‘regatta’ – an artificial rowing canal. I decided to walk all the way to the city center, over 5km, so I saw quite a lot of Plovdiv. Most of the city’s monuments (from Roman, Ottoman and 19th century periods) are covered by the city’s other TWHS . I’ll focus on the mosaics here.

The three structures - Bishop's (or Great) Basilica, Small Basilica and Irene Building - are located a few hundred meters from each other in the south of the city center, where the core of the Roman city was. They only have been accidentally rediscovered since the mid-1980’s during construction works. Slowly they have been excavated and made presentable to the general public.

The remains of the Great Basilica are covered by a large hall. I wondered why …

Kazanlak is a fairly nondescript city in the center of Bulgaria. I drove there directly from another WHS – Pirin National Park. It’s a 4 hour drive. They don't really advertise the fact that they hold a true World Heritage Site within the city limits: a painted Thracian Tomb from the 4th century BC. There are signs here and there, but I mainly had to trust the navigation on my phone. The drive ended at the foot of a long staircase in a residential neighbourhood. So this is it?

The visitor experience of this tomb has changed considerably over the years if we look at the reviews that go back to even before 2009. People used to be still allowed into the original tomb for an extra / unofficial fee. That “tomb”, discovered in 1944, now is no longer recognizable as a tomb: a chapel-like building has been placed around it. It is hermetically sealed. There is a helpful sign next to it that says “Thracian Tomb. Original”. It is worth to peek through the iron bars at the front as the WHS plaque is visible from there.

The replica with a more tomb-like appearance …

With a 2.63 score, Pirin National Park only comes sixth among Bulgaria’s ten WHS, which in itself already aren’t known for receiving high praise (except for the excellent Rila monastery). Most of the reviewers agreed on it being “unremarkable”, wondered about a ski resort in the buffer zone and contemplated that they could see this scenery everywhere in the Alps. All seem to have explored Pirin from the town of Bansko and its nearby Vihren hut. For my visit in late June 2021, I tried another location to see whether this would improve the experience. I choose to start at Bezbog hut, with access to Bezbog Lake and the trail to Popovo Lake.

For Bezbog, you have to take the chairlift from Gotse Delchev hut (be warned that there is also a town called Gotse Delchev, but that lies 30km away). The hut is reached via a paved mountain road some 10km outside of Dobrinishte, the neighbour town of Bansko. The chairlift is operational 365 days a year from 8.30 am to 4 pm. A return ticket costs 20 Lev (10 EUR). To reach Bezbog hut at 2227m altitude, you have to change to another chairlift …

The Prince-Bishops' Palace in Liège has been on Belgium’s Tentative List since 2008. It has been visited so far by 43 of our community members, but was left unreviewed by all. This restraint is probably linked to the very low 22% approval rating they gave it. Last Sunday however I decided to give it a go, as I was also curious about the rest of the city center of Liège which has undergone favourable improvements during the past years.

The palace is a testimony to the 10 centuries when Liège was an independent principiality within Europe. It was governed by prince-bishops, who combined political and religious power. The complex used to include a cathedral as well, but that was demolished in 1793 during the French Revolution-inspired uprising against the prince-bishops.

The long main façade of the building nowadays occupies one quarter of a busy square. Cars, public transport and road works all provide obstacles to really appreciate its setting. The palace is still used for administrative and judicial functions, which prevents ordinary visitors from entering the building. Therefore they miss out on the second, inner courtyard, and the interior decorations. Defendants in court cases, escorted …

With 55 sites inscribed, China is the joint leader among the nations with the most WHS. It will probably be surpassed by Italy again after the combined 2020/2021 WHC, as China has only 1 proposal on the table while Italy has 3. It must have really hurt the Chinese that their Badain Jaran Desert proposal couldn’t be evaluated due to Covid reasons so they miss out on a year – even more so while they are hosting the WHC session. China already wasn’t a big fan of the Cairns Decision of 2000, which limited the number of nominations per country to 1 a year. It has so many more to offer and now it will take them 100 years!

The young Chinese scholar Rouran Zhang has written a study about how China deals with its heritage sites and how they are perceived by their visitors. The WHS of West Lake and Xidi & Hongcun are used as case studies. Zhang is also an expert member at the ICOMOS committee on Cultural Landscapes, so he brings in both the Chinese and the international perspective. “Chinese Heritage Sites and their Audiences” is a book for a scientific audience (with annotations and …

The WHC meeting in the second half of July will be a special one, as the combined nominations for 2020 and 2021 will be discussed. It brings us a long list of potentials to look at. The first batch of IUCN and ICOMOS evaluations have been published last Friday. The second batch, including mostly extensions and referrals/deferrals from earlier years, will follow in a week or two.

With the lumping together of 2 years worth of nominations, it is also easier to see trends. For example, is the Global Strategy working?

What is the Global Strategy?

The Global Strategy was announced in 1994 to create a more Representative, Balanced and Credible World Heritage List.

A global study carried out by ICOMOS from 1987 to 1993 had revealed that Europe, historic towns and religious monuments, Christianity, historical periods and ‘elitist’ architecture (in contrast to vernacular) were all over-represented on the World Heritage List; whereas, all living cultures, and especially ‘traditional cultures’, were underrepresented.

As the study was done by ICOMOS, its focus was on cultural sites. However, the imbalance between cultural sites and natural/mixed sites later also …

The Dutch part of the Lower German Limes TWHS comprises 26 locations on the 2nd century Roman frontier along the river Rhine. Together with a string of sites in what is now Germany, it formed the north-eastern boundary of the Roman province of Germania Inferior . This Lower German Limes is up for discussion at the upcoming Combined 2020-2021 WHC session in July. I haven’t been able to find any news about the outcome of the ICOMOS advice yet, but it seems unlikely that the site will not be accepted given the history of earlier Limes proposals.

I reviewed the German part of this potential WHS already in 2019: Lower German Limes: Xanten . For a glimpse of the Dutch part, I chose location #25: the Roman aqueduct at Berg en Dal. Berg en Dal is a pretty village close to Nijmegen, which was the most important Roman city in the Netherlands. A legion of 5,000 soldiers was stationed here and a town of craft- and tradesmen developed around it. The aqueduct was a military aqueduct, which supplied the legionary fortress with fresh water. …