Pimping the TWHS pages
Website – January 31, 2021 by Els SlotsIn the search for yet another lockdown project I thought time had come to pimp up the TWHS pages on this website. These have always been more limited in content than the WHS pages, but as there are currently 1751 of them that is a missed opportunity. Even more so while we are steadily making progress covering them by visitor reviews. So I set myself to this huge task and managed to already implement some quick wins.
Changes at each TWHS page
Most of the changes can be found on the individual TWHS pages:
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The shortened name is used more often. The full name is still visible on the right after “Official name”, but a shortened version is used in general headers. Shortening of the names is often hard to do by the way, more polished names usually occur when a site is nominated for WH status.
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Each TWHS will eventually get an introduction text of 3 sentences, which states what the site is about and where potential OUV may lie. The main source for this is the description by the State Party on the UNESCO website, paraphrased. Sometimes …
The Neanderthal fossil sites of Wallonia
Site – January 24, 2021 by Els SlotsThe Netherlands and Belgium have been completely out-of-sync in the Covid crisis. During the first wave, Belgium surprised its northern neighbour by an overnight closure of its borders. Later on when one country closed its shops or restaurants, those on the other side were open resulting in lots of opportunistic daytrippers. Now, in January 2021, travel by both sides is discouraged but a visit by car for less than 48 hours needs no prior arrangements. So last Friday I thought I’d give it a go to visit one of the Belgian TWHS that I had not visited before: the Neanderthal fossil sites of Wallonia .
There are four fossil sites included in this TWHS: the Caves of Schmerling, Scladina, Goyet and Spy. They lie within a 50km circle around the city of Namur. Scladina can be visited with a guided tour on certain Sundays, Schmerling and Spy require a pilgrimage on foot and Goyet seems to be closed indefinitely. The Neanderthal remains and associated fossils of course have been whisked away to museums and universities long ago, but these sites are mostly about the Neanderthaler lifestyle and the development of Paleoanthropology as a science.
I …
Expressionist Architecture
Connection – January 17, 2021 by Els SlotsThere’s always something to polish in our long list of Connections . After having deep-dived into some natural subjects during the past weeks, my eye fell on an Architecture topic: Expressionist Architecture . It has only 3 connected sites so far: Hamburg's Kontorhaus District , Sydney Opera House and the Works of Antoni Gaudi . Let’s see if we can find more.
What is it?
Expressionist Architecture is an architectural style from the early 20th century. It is one of the three main subgroups of what we call Modern Architecture. Buildings in this style are distinctive as "they seem like sculpted forms, even though the construction material is primarily brick and concrete.". It originated a bit earlier than the International Style and was itself influenced by Art Nouveau . Notable variants of Expressionist Architecture are the Brick Expressionism of Germany and the Amsterdam School of The Netherlands.
Although the strict definition limits itself to works designed in Europe roughly between 1905 and 1930, sometimes later works on different continents (notably the Sydney Opera House) are categorized as (neo-)expressionist as well.
Wadden Sea: Texel
Site – January 10, 2021 by Els SlotsAt the start of the 2020/2021 winter season I set myself the goal to visit all national parks in The Netherlands . There are 21 of them. The quest so far (I am currently at 12 out of 21) has resulted in wet feet caused by peat bogs, a growing ability to recognize common waterbirds and encounters with out-of-place mammal species such as the Konik .
One of those national parks is ‘Dunes of Texel’, located on the largest and touristically most developed Dutch island in the Wadden Sea: Texel. It overlaps partly with the Wadden Sea WHS , so last Sunday I combined the two destinations into a day trip. It was my first visit to this island.
How to get there
Texel lies only 2.5 km north of the mainland. A 20 minute ferry ride from Den Helder is necessary to get there. Ferries leave every hour and even every half hour during the summer time. You can take a car with you or walk on. There are public buses on both sides, so also when you’re limited to public transport it will be easy. On the island itself a bike can …
Book: Coastal WHS
Book – January 3, 2021 by Els SlotsBooks about WHS are few and far between. Of course there are plenty that feature single sites, but putting a group of WHS into perspective is rare. In 2019 Vanda Claudino-Sales (a geography researcher from Brazil) compiled “ Coastal World Heritage Sites ”. I was happy to contribute a few photos to her book and was given a digital copy of it in return. However it took me until the Second Lockdown and rainy days around Christmas 2020 to find the time to fully read it. The book (aimed at the scientific coastal community) is a bit dry, but it stems from meticulous research and provides lots of tidbits that we can dwell on.
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World Coastal Heritage List
The author presents her own World Coastal Heritage list: natural and mixed WHS that include both purely marine sites as well as terrestrial sites with coastal segments. She found 84 of them in 48 countries. This up to and including the WHC of 2017. In 2018 (none) and 2019 ( French Austral lands , Migratory Bird Sanctuaries , Paraty , Vatnajökull ) I count 4 more coastal sites that could be …
2020 - A Year in Review(s)
Website – December 27, 2020 by Els Slots2020 was the year of closed borders and stay at home orders. It also was the year without a WHC meeting, so no bonus ‘ticks’ for our community members coming from fresh WHS they visited before. Still, we found our ways to travel and keep this website alive.
The impact on our travels
Which members of the top 50 have added to their numbers significantly since March , when the WHO called the outbreak a global pandemic?
- Not too many movements in the Top 10. Probably because most of the people in there are older; also it is hard to add lots of new WHS after you’ve reached a certain threshold. I came out ‘best’, with +9 new WHS divided among 5 countries and 2 continents.
- Of those ranked numbers 11-20, Luis Filipe Gaspar banked +40, although I suspect this was an administrative catch-up. Fan Yibo had +8 with Chinese WHS, Stanislaw Warwas +14 including Turkey, Szucs Tamas +8 including the Greek Islands.
- Among the ones ranked 21-50, the following managed to clock 10 or more: Jarek +23 (13 in …
Cold War
Connection – December 20, 2020 by Els SlotsThis week it has been reported that Ukraine plans to fast track Chernobyl for WH status. For someone my age it brings back memories from the Cold War, with news about the nuclear disaster seeping slowly through the Iron Curtain in 1986. In the WH nomination pipeline also are Gdansk Shipyard (in the TWHS description referred to as symbolizing “the end of the Cold War”) and the Korean DMZ (“the DMZ is a symbolic space of the inter-Korean cold war” ( source )). Post-War era and Cold War sites were considered underrepresented in the ICOMOS Filling the gaps analysis from 2004, so we can expect more of them to come.
The Cold War “was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union and the United States and their respective allies, the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc, after World War II. … the period is generally considered to span the 1947 Truman Doctrine to the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union” ( wiki ). Related WHS which we grouped into a connection include venues where summits between the parties were organized, nuclear testing sites and strategic military locations. These links are mostly by coincidence, so …
Plantations in West Curacao
Site – December 13, 2020 by Els SlotsA few weeks ago I wrote about my foray into Sinology ; after I quit, I went on to study (and finish) Modern and Socio-Economic History. I wrote my master thesis about the Abolishment of Slavery on Curacao. I re-read it before visiting the TWHS Plantations in West Curacao as it is so close to this subject. The slave plantation society at Curacao was atypical, as the island’s soil is not fertile and did not provide enough to make the export of crops profitable. So its mixed produce was mostly eaten by the local population. The plantation owners often had a job in the city as well.
This TWHS has been quite high in the ranking of future Dutch WHS (2019 was once named as the year that it should happen), but doubts have risen and it has been suggested to the Curacao government to think about joining a serial transnational nomination or even seek an extension of the Willemstad WHS (on similar grounds as Trinidad and the Valle de los Ingenios ). I have not been able to find any news on its status beyond 2015.
Nevertheless, I looked forward to a visit during …
WHS #741: Willemstad
Site – December 6, 2020 by Els SlotsCuracao holds the WHS where I could finally “finish” the Netherlands: the " Historic Area of Willemstad, Inner City and Harbour ". While I already was done with the 9 other Dutch WHS in 2011, Willemstad seemed out of reach. The 10-hour flight to an island fully dedicated to mass tourism had always deterred me. During Covid times however, there are no cruise ships and the total number of monthly visitors is limited to 20,000. So it was exactly the right moment for me!
I stayed overnight for a week in the Pietermaai neighbourhood and explored the other 3 zones of the WHS on foot. I used itineraries that I found on the internet to identify the most interesting structures of Scharloo, Otrobanda and Punda.
I started in Scharloo, a neighborhood of detached 19th century residences. The place to be here is the long Scharlooweg. The stately buildings along this road now house companies and also the Swiss consulate. All are heavily secured and have gates in front. No one walked this street on a Sunday, I only met a stray dog.
The Waaigat separates Scharloo from the Punda district, the oldest part of …
Dependent Territories
Connection – November 29, 2020 by Els SlotsWhen this blog post is published, I have just arrived in Curacao. Curacao is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands at the same level as the Netherlands, Aruba and Sint Maarten. It has its own currency, the Netherlands Antillean guilder. It’s a 10 hour flight from Amsterdam. Flights depart Schiphol from the non-Schengen zone. You have to show your passport to enter and to leave. However, when the Dutch Prime Minister adviced against all non-essential travel abroad during the 2nd wave of Covid, the Dutch Caribbean including Curacao was notably exempted as it was considered domestic travel.
Curacao’s only WHS, Willemstad , is included in the total Dutch count as well. It got me thinking about the odd positions of other WHS in Dependent territories. Of course we have a connection for them already!
What is a Dependent territory?
Wiki defines a Dependent territory as “a territory that does not possess full political independence or sovereignty as a sovereign state, yet remains politically outside the controlling state's integral area.”
Characteristics to look for include:
- a great degree of autonomy from its controlling state (for example having their …