Our Connection ‘ Neolithic Age ’ groups all WHS correlating with the Neolithic period. Some derive their OUV from it, while others only have a slight link because archaeological strata from that era have been found below later more important findings.

The Neolithic is the Later Stone Age, a period that timewise differs across the continents but is characterized by the introduction of farming, domestication of animals, and change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement . It was predated by the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic and followed by the relatively short transformation period of the Chalcolithic (a.k.a. Copper Age) before the Bronze Age started.

I updated the Connection and set out to find which sites can be considered the Top Neolithic WHS. And I learned a few things along the way…

Inventory

We already had 55 connected sites. I checked them all for their rationale, updated the texts, and removed two (Vredefort Dome and Rapa Nui). I then did a query on the UNESCO website with the term ‘Neolithic’. This resulted in 42 hits, including 12 previously unconnected ones such as the Antequera Dolmens and Ephesus . The Wikipedia page on the …

With a visit to the Vega Archipelago last Wednesday (see my review here ), I finally ‘completed’ Norway. It took me 5 separate short trips during the period 2002-2024. The most memorable WHS was the Rock Art of Alta (photo 1) – I had never been as far north and as with most of the Norwegian WHS the natural setting defeats the cultural OUV. I will happily continue exploring Norway to visit the TWHS of Svalbard and Lofoten which are still on my wanted list.

But why did it take me so long to complete a European country with ‘only’ 8 WHS, no overseas ones and no new sites since 2015?

The lack of clusters

It would surprise me if any of the 31 other people who have seen all WHS in Norway visited them in one go. Looking at the map, the narrow shape of the country and the rugged landscape result in mostly groupings of 1 or 2: the Far North ( Rock Art of Alta , Struve ), the Central Coast ( Vegaoyan ), near Trondheim ( Røros ), and near Oslo ( Rjukan/Notodden ). There is sort of a cluster …

No, this is not about how to get into that city palace in Brussels. In a recent discussion in our WhatsApp group, Astraftis introduced the term “Stoclet Pass”. It means a visit that is good enough for an otherwise off-limits site . He wrote: “Referring to (semi)inaccessible locations like Roman limes or pile dwellings. If all you can do is to stand on the shore and to contemplate the water surface, then yeah, you get a Stoclet-pass for me".

We've since fully embraced his neonym. So for which WHS is a Stoclet Pass applicable, and what does it involve?

When not being able to enter

The most obvious group of sites to look at is the ones we have gathered in the connection “ Not open to tourists ”. Here we find:

• the Decorated cave of Pont d'Arc and the Thracian tomb of Kazanlak . You can peer through the fence around the original tomb or touch the door to the original cave , but for both, you need to visit a replica to see the paintings. For Pont d’Arc, it can be argued that it adds value to see the …

In 2017, Jarek wrote on the Forum “I guess that during next years Kazakhstan will develop a little bit their touristic infrastructure (I found it completely insufficient in many places) and adjust prices towards budget travellers (let's hope as right now they tend to overprice the services offered).”

Oh boy, was he wrong! I spent 11 days there in June 2024 and I am glad I went as it broadened my view of the country and its WHS are worthy, but tourist friendly it still isn’t. Below are my Top Tips for Travel to Kazakhstan as a WH Traveller.

1. Don’t be put off already beforehand!

Usually when preparing for trips I get more and more excited about the destination. Kazakhstan is the only country I can remember from my recent travels where the more I learned about it, the less enthusiastic I got. It all seemed such a hassle with sights few and far between. I couldn't even finish reading the Bradt Guide on Kazakhstan as it was so boring.

2. Its cities are a pleasant surprise

Visiting the main Kazakh cities certainly made my outlook on the country more positive. …

On a map, the Kazakh WHS of Tanbaly (not to be confused with Tamgaly Tas !) doesn’t look to be too far from Almaty, but it takes quite some time to cover the 170km between the two places (we did it in 2h45). I went with a car & driver which I’d hired for the day via Indyguide , and we first had to navigate the busy and chaotic traffic to get out of Almaty. Then there’s a good stretch of highway west and, after the turnoff to the north which is signposted to the Site of Tanbaly, what remains is a B-road with some potholes but little traffic. The only thing you see by the side of the road are large farms, and they keep sheep and horses as livestock. As so often with rock art sites, Tanbaly lies in a remote river canyon that once had special meaning for people living in or passing through the region but lost its significance later on. It’s also the only piece of exposed rock in an area of steppes and offers protection against the sun and wind.

Our first stop was at the museum, which was given …

As Solivagant has written, China is a new country every 10 years . I hadn’t been there since early 2019 - and even since then it has changed again. It has started to look more and more like Japan, especially in the most prosperous part of the country. If you look closely you may still notice an elderly person spitting into a garbage can, and I even spotted a group of pensioners playing cards (or gambling?) under a bridge in Hangzhou. But the younger generations in the cities seem like a different breed.

To stimulate the return of international tourism after COVID, the Chinese government has allowed a 15-day visa-free entrance into the country for a select group of nationalities (the group seems a bit random but a major factor appears to be the country's appeal to visiting Chinese tourists). So fortunately the Chinese love the Dutch flower fields and I was let into the country without questions.

Please find below my Tips for visiting WHS in China on the 15-day visa-free scheme.

1. You can pack in a lot in 15 days

China is so huge that it doesn’t matter whether you have ‘only’ 15 days or 3 months. …

China usually doesn’t have much trouble inscribing sites, but it did have a hard time with China Danxia . “Danxia” is an elusive subject, even Wikipedia isn’t able to define it in one sentence (it calls it “pseudo-karst” consisting of red-coloured sandstones from the Cretaceous and limited to China). ICOMOS and IUCN couldn’t really wrap their heads around it either – IUCN basically saying there isn’t such a thing as a globally acknowledged Danxia landform and ICOMOS insisting that this should be a cultural site (criterion VI, rich cultural associations) instead of a natural site (criterion VII, natural beauty).

Eight out of the nine locations that comprise the WHS of ‘China Danxia’ have so far stayed unreviewed on this website. I visited a ‘new’ one – the Guifeng section of Longhushan National Park. This site is separate from the main Longhushan park (both in geographical reality and in the inscribed list of components), but they share the same site management and Global Geopark status. The strength of Guifeng is that it is very compact, so you can get a good impression of what Danxia entails within a relatively short amount of time.

Unlike other Chinese …

The WHS of Mount Wuyi has not been covered well by reviews yet - at least I think they do not do justice to the complexity of this mixed WHS. After reading beforehand about what to see and do in the area I decided to spend more than one day here and explore various parts.

On my arrival day, I moved straight to the second location called “Ruin of Han Dynasty City”. This lies some 15km outside of the Wuyi scenic area. From Nanpingshi railway station (formerly known as Wuyishan East) I took the recently installed tramway and got off at Chengcun, from where it’s a 3km walk to the ruins (it’s signposted and you can use the bike path). It’s a location of interest in the inscription history of this WHS, as ICOMOS in 1999 actually considered it a separate site and thought it would be better to split this cultural archeological site from the more nature-focused main site.

The split didn’t happen though and now the Han City Ruins are part of the Wuyi WHS, and they proudly display the WH logo everywhere. Strangely, access regulations are different between the two locations – …

While preparing for my upcoming trip to Kazakhstan I found out that both parks that together form the Saryarka WHS are ‘Strict Nature Reserves’. We already have a connection for that (of course), and I took the opportunity to refresh it. I had always thought that these Strict Reserves wouldn't allow for tourist visits (we had that in our connection description as well: "a zone with the highest wilderness protection and not open to tourism"), but it turns out that the story is different.

What is meant by “Strict”?

IUCN over the years has developed a system to categorize protected areas – the most recent incarnation dates from 1994. It is meant to provide international standards and is used locally to provide a basis for legislation. This system ranks from high to lower levels of protection, represented by categories I to VI with I being the highest. See this source for how it works, the quotes below were taken from this document.

The Strict Nature Reserve is category Ia . Here, “human visitation, use and impacts are strictly controlled and limited to ensure protection of the conservation values”. The reserves protect natural features “that …

We are awaiting the publication of the documents for the 2024 WHC session, which will become available online in about a month or so. These documents will not only give us the AB advisories for the 2024 nominations but also bring the full list of nominations for 2025 to the table. “Predicting” these possible new WHS has been a significant community effort of this website for years; it makes it possible to plan your travels by taking in the Upcoming Nominations .

So how good are we at predicting? Nominations aren't always as clearly announced as by this Chinese news outlet:

A bit of History

In 2009 we started from a document someone had found floating around on the web, and the years 2010 and 2011 saw similar patterns. For the WHC of 2012, a forum topic was started in late 2010: this was the first time a set of candidates was identified based on media sources before the official UNESCO document set was published.

Kyle/winterkjm now yearly makes neat lists based on crawling the web in various languages. His overviews and the forum topics invite others to amend these lists with sites …