The Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae comprise 10 archaeological sites in the far south of Egypt. They were the products of the pharaonic attempts to dominate Nubia. Many trip reports from the past about Abu Simbel start with the compulsory convoy that has to be taken to travel there from Aswan, effectively limiting arrival times to two times a day. The convoy has been discontinued however since October 2016. So after leaving my dahabiya near Aswan, I was picked up by a car and driver at 9 a.m. for the 3 hour drive south. The drive is incredibly boring, just a desert road with maybe one or two gas stations. There are road signs however to temples into the desert – two of them are Amada and Wadi es-Sebua which are also part of this WHS .

I was staying overnight to be able to visit the temples without tour groups being there, and also to get a hint of the Nubian feel of the town of Abu Simbel. My latter wish was completely satisfied by the Eskaleh Lodge, an oasis …

The Ptolemies ruled over Egypt from 304 to 30 BC. They were descendants of Macedonian Greeks, whose leader Alexander the Great had conquered the pharaonic lands and set up his capital in Alexandria in the far north. The Ptolemies (all their kings were named Ptolemy) did however contribute their own set of temples to the already existing landscape of sacred sites upstream along the Nile. Four of these temples are combined on the Tentative List under the name Pharaonic temples in Upper Egypt from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods . They are located in Dendera, Esna, Edfu and Kom Ombo. I visited the latter two as side trips from a dahabiya cruise along the Nile.

Edfu is a mid-size commercial town without any charm. Together with my 5 shipmates I crossed it quickly by horse carriage, the traditional form of taxi transport that also still can be found in Luxor. The temple’s parking lot even has a shaded section to park the horses. The temple at Edfu is dedicated to the falcon-headed warrior god Horus. His image is the trademark of this temple, and the various granite sculptures of …

Thebes , what we now call Luxor, is one of the most ancient “tourist” destinations in the world. Already the ancient Greeks came here to marvel at the temples that were built by the Egyptian pharaohs. Later Christian and Muslim generations had much less respect for their forefathers, so it wasn’t until the 19th century that these sites were rediscovered by Europeans. The 21st century has brought Asian tourism to the spectrum: the Chinese are the only nation that dare to come here today en masse. It became especially popular since a visit of president Xi Jingping to president Sisi in 2016, which partly took place in the inner courtyard of Luxor Temple. The site was already inscribed as a WHS in 1979, with epithets such as “splendid”, “monumental” and “unique and unequaled”. It is also part of our Top 200. Not much of substance has been written about it yet among our reviewers though (sorry guys). Important to know is that it comprises 3 locations: the temple of Karnak and the temple of Luxor on the East bank of the Nile, and the Necropolis on the West …

The Kuwait Towers ( Abraj Al-Kuwait in Arabic) is the most promising entry on Kuwait’s Tentative List. A visit is a great excuse to immerse yourself in the recent history of Kuwait. Next to the brash United Arab Emirates and Qatar, Kuwait is often overlooked. But economically it has bounced back nicely after recovering from the Iraqi occupation during the Gulf War (1990-1991). It has the fourth highest per capita income in the world according to the World Bank, and it is considered the region’s shining example on liberal achievements such as press freedom and gender equality.

The Towers are conveniently located in the heart of Kuwait City. They store water that is pumped from seawater distillation plants, and thus represent the network of modern water distribution among the population. The 3 that are known as the Kuwait Towers are the showpieces among the 34 water towers from the 1970s that lie scattered around Kuwait. Ironically only 1.5 out of these 3 provide the core function of storing water (the second one holds a viewing tower cum restaurant on top of the water reservoir and the third one only …

I am a rather late convert to Paris – only in 2002 I visited the city for the first time and it took another 10 years for a second visit. My third trip to the French capital would be more in-depth than the first two that had covered most of the touristic route: during the past weekend I joined a small group of 12 fellow students at the Open University with whom I had been to Florence in 2015 . The organizing team had drawn up a full 4 day schedule, focusing on small art museums and architectural highlights.

Obviously we didn’t stay within the Banks of the Seine all the time, so I’ll try to focus this report on the sites that are within the WHS area or just next to it. We stayed overnight at the recommended Ibis Bastille, quite a steal at 80 EUR per night in central Paris. It is located close to Le Marais, a former aristocratic area and active Jewish neigbourhood (featuring an interesting Art Nouveau synagogue by Guimard ).

Along the Seine we visited the Orangerie, an …

From the Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bains to the Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans, the production of open-pan salt is one of the more imaginative WHS of France. With an admission date of 1982 it also is one of the earlier sites on the WH List. So I was really looking forward to visiting, and it did not disappoint. I even had wanted to stay overnight at Arc-et-Senans, but when I checked 2 months beforehand the on-site hotel La Saline Royale was already fully booked for the date that I wanted.

My planned visit on a Sunday in March left me with a dilemma: because of the limited opening hours during the winter season, I only had time to visit 1 out of the 2 inscribed locations (Arc-et-Senans or Salins-les-Bains) properly. I eventually chose Salins-les-Bains, as its features are mostly underground and less weather dependent. The site lies in the French Jura, quite a trip through the countryside away from the nearest tollway exit.

During the weekends off-season there are 3 daily tours of the underground saltworks. They are all conducted in French, although foreign speakers are provided with …

The Climats, terroirs of Burgundy is a fairly recent addition to the evergrowing list of wine-related WHS. The site covers a large area in the east of France, with officially two components: (1) the over 1,200 viticultural parcels called ‘Climats’ with villages and the town of Beaune and (2) the historic centre of Dijon. The site so far has only attracted one review on this website. And noone has written about the Beaune component yet. So that’s where my focus was on my weekend trip to Burgundy. An early warning: I am not going to write about wine!

Beaune once was the seat of the Duchy of Burgundy, a medieval state (or more precise: a personal union of many lands) that originated in the current French region of Bourgogne. The power of the Burgundian dukes stretched into what is now Holland and Belgium – the Burgundian Netherlands are still part of history lessons in the Netherlands. The Burgundian dukes managed to impose a central rule on the various provinces and city states of the Lowlands.

During exactly this period, the 15th century, the city’s one …

A few weeks ago we’ve had an interesting discussion at the Forum about the unfulfilled potential of African sites as future WHS. With some creative thinking we easily came up with possible additions to tentative lists. But especially ‘modern’ sites, connected to for example modern architecture and urban planning, seem to be few and far between. Coincidentally, a recent publication on global heritage matters adresses just this issue.

Global Heritage Assemblages: Development and Modern Architecture in Africa by Christoph Rausch is the publication of a PhD thesis. After a longish introduction of the theoretical framework, the second part of the book focuses on 3 case studies on Modern African Heritage. The most captive is the story of Asmara , up for WH nomination this year. The author shows how both the transnational organizations such as the World Bank and the EU ánd the Eritrean government use the cultural heritage of the Modern Architecture of Asmara for their own purposes. The early 20th century Italian colonial urbanism of Asmara is seen by the transnational organizations as a globally shared heritage, of importance to both colonizers and colonized. This is founded on a “nostalgia for colonial utopias …

The Burial Ensembles of Dilmun and Tylos (renamed to: "Dilmun Burial Mounds") are nominated by Bahrain to become a WHS later this year. This move forward is quite surprising, as in the past these burial fields have been known as sites with ‘issues’. “In a New Age, Bahrain Struggles to Honor the Dead While Serving the Living” wrote the New York Times in 2009 , while CNN similarly reported in 2013 : “In Bahrain, development chips away at world's largest, oldest burial site”.

The Dilmun civilization existed in what now is Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and coastal Saudi Arabia. It controlled the Persian Gulf trading routes and was an important trading center from the late fourth millennium to 800 BC. Tylos was the name used by the Greeks to refer to Bahrain after the Dilmun period (ca. 6th to 3rd century BC). While burial mounds or tumuli are quite a common sight all over the world, these Bahraini ones from the Dilmun and Tylos eras “have the highest density of mound fields in a limited territory and the highest concentration of mounds in one single field”.

The excellent Bahrain National …

“You don’t need luck. You need good shoes!”, fellow WH traveller Nan e-mailed me when I told him to wish me luck ticking off the Par force hunting landscape . He was so right, and I’d like to add to others that plan to visit this WHS: also bring snacks, something to drink and a smartphone with GPS. And do read up a bit about what par force hunting entails beforehand. From the 3 main components of this WHS, I had set my sights on Store Dyrehave (“large deer park”). Both Store Dyrehave and a formerly connected second component, Gribskov, lie near the town of Hillerød (the third, Jaegersborg, is located closer to Copenhagen, sees a whopping 7.5 million visitors a year and is already well-covered on this website). Getting to Hillerød already did not prove to be as easy as internet research had lead me to believe. Part of the direct S-train route was blocked, so passengers had to be transported by buses to the final destination. This added another 20 minutes to the 1 hour trip from Copenhagen Airport. Having finally arrived at the station in Hillerød, …