Aquileia is a town in the far northeast of Italy, situated between Venice and Trieste. This frontier location is what made it into a WHS as well: founded as a Latin colony in 181 BC, it rose to a respectable position as Adriatic port, trading centre and seat of a patriarchate whose territory extended to large parts of modern Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia. Aquileia had 100,000 inhabitants in the 2nd century AD – today there are only 3,500 and the town has fallen almost into oblivion.

The Basilica, with the apse covered in frescoes

I arrived in Aquileia on a bright sunny Saturday afternoon – the town would be my base for 4 days in the wider Venice region. Originally I had booked a hotel in Cervignano, but I cancelled it a week ago – a good choice so it seemed, as Cervignano appeared to be nothing more than a sleepy transport hub when I passed through it getting off the train from Venezia Mestre. Aquileia is much nicer: very compact, and just touristy enough to have several restaurants and frequent bus links within the region. The WHS encompasses …

This summer, South Korea’s nomination of nine of its historic “seowons” will be under scrutiny from the WHC. Seowons were private institutions combining education (in the form of preparation for admission to the national civic service) and Neo-Confucian worship. A serial proposal such as this is always worth checking out in detail, as there may be hidden surprises among the selected locations. Personally I was happy to discover Dosan Seowon among the entries listed, a site that I visited on my Korea trip of 2001.

One of the library buildings, elevated to protect against humidity

Dosan Seowon is located not far from Hahoe WHS , and I visited both on the same day (I even included a third 'national treasure', Jebiwon Buddha ). My trip notes about Dosan Seowon are brief: “Idyllic location. Very quiet, only a handful of visitors. Lots of Korean film directors apparently come here for shooting traditional Korean footage.”. All memory of my activities of that day have since blurred, and the fact that I had not labelled the photos in my Korea photoalbum does not help either (mind you, 2001 was the pre-digital age). …

Together with Frank Lloyd Wright & Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier is without a doubt one of the ‘missing’ modern architects from the WH List. However, the state parties involved have a hard time getting this transboundary serial nomination of Le Corbusier buildings together. After referral in 2009 and deferral in 2011, the revised proposal still is a complex one with 17 sites in 7 countries. The earlier dismissals were mainly about the number and choice of locations, and how they individually show Outstanding Universal Value. The 2016 nomination now also includes Chandigarh (India); they even had President Hollande come over and promote it last month . After standing in front of closed doors in La Plata ( Casa Curutchet ), Antwerp ( Maison Guiette ) and Tokyo ( National Museum of Western Art ), I longed for a proper visit to one of Le Corbusier’s undeniable masterworks. The Villa Savoye et loge du jardinier in Poissy has been part of all 3 Corbusier-nominations and is also among the 3 French sites deemed worthy enough by ICOMOS in 2011 of inscription under their own steam. So that's where I headed!

Relaxing in the …

Right after Christmas I spent 3 weeks travelling around Rwanda, DR of Congo and Uganda. It was a great and well-balanced trip, that covered 2 TWHS and 4 WHS. 2 out of the latter had not been reviewed before on this website, so this is some real undiscovered territory. Find below my Top Tips for Travelling to Rwanda, Congo and Uganda as a World Heritage Traveller.

Want to see the hippos of the Ugandan Kazinga Channel? 40 US dollar entrance fee + 28 US dollar boat ride

1. Go there when you can afford it

In preparation I read trip reports from people who travelled in this region without entering any of the major National Parks. They only had the money to sustain their daily travel costs of food, public transport and lodging. I’d say: be prepared that these are expensive destinations, and that you’ll enjoy them more if you have saved up a bit. You’ll easily be asked to hand over 50 to 100 US dollar for any activity on top of entrance fees (the Ugandan Wildlife Service provides a handy …

The ‘Kasubi Tombs’, as the Tombs of the Buganda Kings are known locally, may be the only tourist attraction of Kampala (a capital city with 2.5 million inhabitants). And then came that devastating fire on March 10, 2010: the main thatched structure with the 4 tombs of the former kings and their regalia burned to the ground . The cause is still unknown: was it arson or was it struck by lightning? Anyway: it hasn’t been rebuilt yet. Still I found it an interesting site, and it is an easy place to visit shortly before leaving Uganda via Entebbe Airport.

The 5 most recent kings of Buganda: the 4 to the right were buried here. The current king is the one on the left

The tombs are situated on a hill about three kilometers outside of Kampala city centre. Due to a traffic jam my minibus from Entebbe had a hard time reaching the bus station, so I got out somewhere along the way and approached a boda-boda . The guy immediately understood where I wanted to go, and we took off zigzagging through the dense traffic. There are …

Rwenzori Mountains National Park covers a 80km long mountain ridge in the far west of Uganda. It forms a natural border with the DR of Congo. The park attracts some 2,700 visitors a year, of which at least half are local schoolchildren. The others are mainly trekkers and mountaineers, arriving to hike a 10-day circuit or give the 3rd highest peak of Africa (Margherita’s Peak) a try. WH travellers do not often make it there: so far only 16 claim to have visited it, while noone has written a review yet.

Old mining barracks in Kyanjiki

In preparation of my visit I had been looking for the best access point to get into the park without having to do a multi-day hike. I found out that there are two main entries: one at Nyakalengija (with the Equator Snow Lodge and Ruboni Community Camp ) and one near Kilembe. I choose the latter, as the Rwenzori Trekking Services (RTS) advertised one day treks into the park departing from the associated Trekkers Hostel Kyanjiki. The office of the RTS, whose members accompany the hikes and maintain the trails, is also found …

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park has been made a WHS for its high variety of tree and fern species, whose dense cover of the valley floors has lead to the name ‘impenetrable’. It is the remnant of what once was a very large forest. To the general public the park is mostly known as the number 1 place to see mountain gorillas. Bwindi welcomes over 20,000 visitors a year for that purpose.

Impenetrable Forest

Although the southern part of Bwindi lies only some 50km north of Mgahinga NP and the Virunga Massif, it is a separate mountain range. Both nature reserves were once connected via a corridor, but they got separated some 500 years ago. The mountain gorillas in Bwindi have evolved on their own since, that’s why they’re sometimes regarded as a different subspecies from the Virungan ones. According to research, they are more likely to feed on fruits, travel longer distances per day and build their nest in trees than their Virungan cousins. As this was my second gorilla tracking after Virunga 5 days before, it is tempting to compare the two experiences. In hindsight I am happy …

Mgahinga Gorilla National Park is a very small park in the extreme southwest of Uganda. Covering the Ugandan part of the Virunga Mountains, it is contiguous with both Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda and Virunga National Park in Congo. The site has been on Uganda’s Tentative List since 2007, in preparation for a possible transboundary nomination of these 3 parks. Although it’s named ‘Gorilla National Park’, Mgahinga has only one habituated gorilla family that can be visited. And that one is prone to wander across the borders to Rwanda and Congo, so it’s not the safest bet for gorilla tracking (although since a few years the family has returned to Ugandan soil). Probably the only thing that sets this park apart from the nearby WHS of Virunga and Bwindi is its sizeable population of rare Golden Monkeys.

Park entrance - they already have developed an Epic Subtitle

The Ugandan Wildlife Authority has a helpful office in Kisoro, and I booked my Golden Monkey Tracking there a day beforehand. It costs 50 US dollar for the activity, plus 40 US dollar entrance fee to …

From the moment that I became aware that it’s feasable at the moment to cross the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo and visit Virunga National Park , I simply had to do it. I booked myself into the comfortable Mikeno Lodge , arranged transport from Kigali in Rwanda to the Congolese border and signed up for a gorilla trek in the park. This is one of the earliest WHS (1979) and it has been praised in superlatives for its montane landscape, volcanism and biodiversity. The site is also one of the 50 remaining WHS that are still unreviewed at this website. The park has been faced with “an almost uninterrupted series of trials” since the mid-1980s, ranging from the influx of one million Rwandan refugees in its vicinity to the oil exploration by SOCO. The latter is the subject of the acclaimed but rather unsettling documentary Virunga (2014), which I watched on Netflix a week before I headed out there. “Congo is safe now”, my Rwandese driver said while we were passing empty refugee camps near the border.

Park quarters at Bukima

One of the first remarkable …

Rwanda has no WHS to date, and it saddens that the only entry on its Tentative List comprises the Rwandan Genocide Memorial Sites . The horrors of the Rwandan Genocide still determine the image of this small country, though it has come a long way since. The TWHS covers four locations connected with the memory of those 100 days in Spring and early Summer of 1994. Spread out over the country, they are: Nyamata (a church), Murambi (a school), Bisesero (a hill) and Gisozi (the main Genocide Memorial Center in Kigali).

Remembrance wall at Kigali Memorial

On my first morning in Rwanda I headed to the Memorial Museum of Gisozi. I got there on the back of a moto-taxi, the ubiquituous and very convenient mode of transport in Kigali. The Museum is guarded tightly, they wanted to see what I had in my backpack and pockets. Police and soldiers in the streets are a common sight in Rwanda, especially at intersections and government buildings. The Genocide Museum was opened in 2004 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. It consists of a building …