Antwerp already has 2 WHS within its borders (the Plantin-Moretus Museum plus the Belfries of the City Hall & Cathedral), but is aiming for 2 more. Maison Guiette is part of the transboundary Corbusier nomination for 2016, and has managed to stay on the list of proposed locations even after the necessary deletion of sites. The Historic core within the walls of 1250 covers the remainder of the historical city. Antwerp is the largest city in Belgium, and in continuous rivalry with Brussels which already has 3 sites on the WH List and 2 more on the Tentative List. The day after Easter is a holiday in The Netherlands, and I used it this year to revisit Antwerp which is only a 75 minute drive from my home. I had been there a couple of times before.

City Center with Cathedral

First I drove to the south of the city, to the residential neighbourhood where the Maison Guiette lies. I had a look beforehand on Google Streetview, to check out the area and to know what to look for. As other reviewers have noticed, it's not easy to park …

The Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape is one of the more remote sites on the UK mainland. The closest international airport I could fly into was Bristol, still a 2 hour and 45 minute drive away from my first destination. The WHS is spread out over 10 locations, most even much further at the tip of Cornwall and totally out of reach for my weekend trip. Together they form a partly relict and partly evolving cultural landscape, the result of 18th and early 19th century copper and tin mining.

Hiking around St. Agnes

I had been advised to start at St. Agnes Mining District. St. Agnes is a coastal village with a mining history since prehistoric times. I had brought with me a print of a 9km circular walk along the coast, taking in some of the mining ruins. After parking the rental car in the town center, I started walking immediately. Signage isn't great, but somehow I found my way to the Trevaunance Cove. From here copper ore was shipped to Wales for smelting, and coal and other goods were unloaded for use at the mines. …

The Dzongs of Bhutan are on our Top 50 Missing List, and also on Bhutan's Tentative list under the cumbersome name " Dzongs: the centre of temporal and religious authorities (Punakha Dzong, Wangdue Phodrang Dzong, Paro Dzong, Trongsa Dzong and Dagana Dzong) ". Maybe an Epic Subtitle like "The Birth of unified Bhutan" or the Mongolian-style "Great Sacred Dzongs of Bhutan" could help the Bhutanese on their way. The country has no WHS till date. This cluster of five dzongs is the most likely candidate for inscription.

Majestic Punakha Dzong

These 5 fortified religious and administrative complexes are lumped together as they played a significant role in the unification of the country "by the charismatic leader Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyel ". The dzongs were built between 1637 and 1651 to defend Bhutan against Tibetan raids. Their wooden architecture makes them vulnerable to fires, and earthquakes and flash floods too have lead to many reconstruction activities. I visited the country in 1998, as part of a 3 week tour around Sikkim & Bhutan focusing on Tibetan Buddhism. The trip wasn't as great as I had thought it would be. Unfortunately we …

Carthage is one of those famous names on the WH List that we all know about. It got already inscribed in 1979, part of the second batch of sites that also included the Pyramids, Dubrovnik and the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately I never got around to visiting Tunisia so far, but I am surely interested in doing so in the near future. The Dutch National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden currently holds a large exhibition on Carthage. Pieces from the Bardo Museum in Tunis, the Louvre and the British Museum are on show until May 10, 2015.

Punic god Baal-Hammon recognizable in his Roman alter ego Saturnus Africanus

The exhibition covers 2 floors of this canalside museum. The first floor is dedicated to Punic Carthage: the city was founded by Phoenicians from the area around Tyre (nowadays in Lebanon). They brought their gods and goddesses with them and created a city-state with a far-reaching trade network and huge military power. Especially this period is a unique piece of North African history, which often is overshadowed by Roman Carthage.

From the reviews on our website, …

In December 2014 Mongolia submitted a new Tentative List. It holds 13 sites, of which several such as the Gobi desert, the Desert fossil sites, Amarbayasgalant Monastery and a group of Sacred Mountains have appeared under different aliases on earlier lists. This renewal might be the start of intensified Mongolian WH activity during the coming years. Now awarded with only 3 WHS, this vast and unique country certainly has potential for more.

Cover of a booklet that I bought in Mongolia in 2002, before it had any WHS

I could not find a schedule of the proposed nominations, but what we do know is that Mongolia is up for 2 new WHS in 2015! First there's the natural site " Landscapes of Dauria ", a transboundary nomination with Russia. This steppe is already a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve and Ramsar Site. It's the breeding ground for the white-naped cranes, ranked as "vulnerable" by IUCN. Unless local authorities start to dig for oil, build a pipeline or a dam in this area I see no reason why it would be rejected.

The other one is …

Granada and Leon have battled forever about which of the two is the most important city in Nicaragua. The Republic's Leadership even had to find a new capital in between the two rivals as a compromise: Managua. The City of Granada therefore must look with envy to Leon's 2 WHS, the only sites designated in Nicaragua so far. In the promotion of the TWHS City of Granada and its natural environment every argument possible seems to have been brought forward to turn this around. The city was founded in 1542 and now has some 100,000 inhabitants. It's Nicaragua's "Tourism Capital": it has been a blossoming tourism and expat center since the early 21st century. It holds a particular attraction for Snowbirds from the USA. Clearly it does tick the right boxes for them: a warm climate, cute colonial town center, lots of foreigner-oriented restaurants (serving smoothies and green salads instead of the Nicaraguan staple rice and beans) and still cheap to live in. I stayed for 3 nights in Granada, and one of the best things I did was take the self-guided Lonely Planet "Colonial Explorer" City Walk. The whole circuit takes 4 hours, …

Nicaragua is a land of volcanoes, and the Volcan Masaya is the most spectacular of them all. It's an active complex volcano with a total of five craters and numerous other volcanic features. Masaya continually emits large amounts of sulfur dioxide gas. The site has been on the Tentative List since 1995, but seems to have never been seriously considered. Volcan Masaya lies within easy reach of a half-day trip from Managua or Granada. It's a very accessible site with a car/taxi or an organized tour. I visited it on a "Night Tour" from Granada - we were 17 tourists divided over 2 minibuses. After a short visit to the historic market in Masaya City , we arrived in this National Park at about 4.30 p.m. Apparently this is the only volcano in the western hemisphere where you are able to drive to the rim. And that's what we did first: stand next to a steaming crater. There was so much smoke that it was not possible to look down to see what's boiling inside. Because of the gases, you're only allowed to stay in this area for 5 minutes. I found it remarkable …

When the León Cathedral entered the List in 2011, many will have wondered "Do we really need another cathedral?". After having now visited this Nicaraguan monument, my answer would be: "It's different". It's essentially a Centralamerican structure, not purely Spanish-colonial as so many others (although its construction was started during the late colonial years). Also, it's a Single Monument that carries the weight of being a WHS on its own - not "just" as part of an inscribed city center.

Weeping lion at the tomb of the omnipresent Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario

León is Nicaragua's second city in size. Its slogan is "Primera Capital de la Revolucion" : here's where the demise of the Somoza regime started. León has been a Sandinista stronghold since. Right next to the cathedral survives a long political mural from the 1980s , painted jointly by German and Nicaraguan artists. The cathedral has been used for militairy purposes also in the insurrection of 1979. The cathedral is Leóns pride, and it stands impressively in the center of town. It's so huge and there a so many turrets and domes on its roof, that it …

León Viejo is said to be one of the earliest cities of Spanish America. Panama Viejo , that I visited last week, makes the same claim. I have been looking for a list in which order these Spanish overseas cities were founded, but could only find this one . It doesn't even include León Viejo; if I fit it in, with 1524 it would come on a shared 11th place among the Spanish colonial cities. The difference between this and many other cities on that list is that it has not developed since the 16th century, when it was abandoned. Anyway, León Viejo is of great importance to Nicaragua as it was its first colonial capital. The Spanish settled on the shore of what then was called the Lake of Leon. In its heyday, some 200 Spanish families lived here. A serious town was constructed for them, although there weren't many inhabitants: everything seems to have been supersized. There were no less than three convents, and the town hall spanned a full block. In the surrounding area lived thousands of native Americans, who were dominated and put to work by the Spanish. The entrance …

Portobelo and San Lorenzo were Spanish fortifications on the Caribbean coast of Panama. Portobelo even was the most important Spanish port of Central America in its time, the storehouse for the silver and gold that came from Peru by land or sea/river and had to be transported across the Atlantic. Both sites lie on either side of the modern city of Colón, some 80 km apart. As most others, I only visited Portobelo. I would love to see a review of San Lorenzo on this website too, but it isn't as easily accessible. Without a rental car, your only chance is joining a day tour from Panama City. The pricing of these tours (of any guided tour from Panama City) is ridiculous: they all seem to start at 100 US dollar. That's the downside of Panama: due to the cruise public, a large number of western expats and the general Americanization of the country prices often bear no relation to real costs. Fortunately Portobelo can be reached by public transport. It cost me 5 US dollar each way, with a change of buses at the town of Sabanitas. Taking this route, you avoid Colon …