Other reviewers have spoken about the highlights of Valletta: the magnificent interior of St John’s Co-Cathedral (despite its plain exterior), the hilly grid layout with many Baroque buildings, and the …
James Bowyer
Member since April 2020
#469 107 21
From the North of England, became interested in World Heritage Sites just before all international travel was banned in early 2020 - what luck!
My most impressive site: Rome/Vatican City
My proposal for a new site: Chernobyl Exclusion Zone/Polesie State Radioecological Reserve
Recent Visits
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10June 7, 2025Caves and Ice Age Art
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60May 25, 2025Botanical Garden, Padua, Longobards in Italy, Padua’s fourteenth-century fresco cycles, Venice and its Lagoon, Verona …
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10Jan. 28, 2025Istanbul
Top 10 Missing
Completed Countries
About James Bowyer
- First name
- James
- Member since
- April 2020
- Country of Origin
- None
Visits
- Rank
- #469
- WHS
- 107
- Tentative Sites
- 21
Website Participation
- Reviews
- 26
-
Ratings
Ratings
World Heritage Sites
- Pompei 5.0
- Rome 5.0
- Vatican City 5.0
- Brugge 4.5
- Auschwitz Birkenau 4.5
- Villa Adriana (Tivoli) 4.5
- Paris, Banks of the Seine 4.5
- Stonehenge 4.5
- Neolithic Orkney 4.5
- Istanbul 4.5
- Vienna 4.5
- Versailles 4.5
- Royal Palace at Caserta 4.5
- Venice and its Lagoon 4.5
- Plantin-Moretus Museum 4.0
- Edinburgh 4.0
- Gwynedd Castles 4.0
- Schönbrunn 4.0
- Hallstatt-Dachstein 4.0
- Acropolis 4.0
- Warsaw 4.0
- Museumsinsel (Museum Island) 4.0
- Mycenae and Tiryns 4.0
- Padua’s fourteenth-century fresco cycles 4.0
- Verona 4.0
- Durham Castle and Cathedral 4.0
- Fontainebleau 4.0
- Potsdam 4.0
- Epidaurus 4.0
- Archaeological Site of Delphi 4.0
- Etruscan Necropolises 4.0
- Hal Saflieni Hypogeum 4.0
- Megalithic Temples of Malta 4.0
- Giant's Causeway 4.0
- Costiera Amalfitana 4.0
- Sintra 4.0
- Rhaetian Railway 4.0
- Villages with Fortified Churches 4.0
- Wieliczka and Bochnia Royal Salt Mines 4.0
- Brú na Bóinne 4.0
- Kraków 4.0
- Sighisoara 3.5
- Studley Royal Park 3.5
- Maritime Greenwich 3.5
- Westminster 3.5
- Forth Bridge 3.5
- Torun 3.5
- City of Luxembourg 3.5
- Amsterdam Canal Ring 3.5
- Canterbury 3.5
- Blenheim Palace 3.5
- Champagne 3.5
- Chartres Cathedral 3.5
- Reims 3.5
- Blaenavon Industrial Landscape 3.5
- Villa d'Este 3.5
- Mafra 3.5
- Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy 3.5
- Venetian Works of Defence 3.5
- Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape 3.5
- Frontiers of the Roman Empire 3.5
- Valletta 3.5
- Daphni, Hosios Loukas and Nea Moni of Chios 3.5
- Amiens Cathedral 3.5
- Graz 3.5
- Naples 3.5
- Vicenza and the Palladian Villas 3.5
- Belem 3.0
- City of Bath 3.0
- Jodrell Bank Observatory 3.0
- Pienza 3.0
- Funerary and memory sites of the First World War 3.0
- Wachau Cultural Landscape 3.0
- The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales 3.0
- Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai 3.0
- Lake District 3.0
- Ironbridge Gorge 3.0
- Kew Gardens 3.0
- Tower of London 3.0
- Gorham's Cave Complex 3.0
- Dorset and East Devon Coast 3.0
- The Flow Country 2.5
- Berlin Modernism Housing Estates 2.5
- La Lonja de la Seda 2.5
- Palmeral of Elche 2.5
- Mining Sites of Wallonia 2.5
- Fortifications of Vauban 2.5
- Grand Place, Brussels 2.5
- Great Spa Towns of Europe 2.5
- Semmering Railway 2.5
- Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal 2.5
- Derwent Valley Mills 2.5
- Kalwaria Zebrzydowska 2.5
- Flemish Béguinages 2.5
- Belfries 2.5
- Botanical Garden, Padua 2.5
- Val d'Orcia 2.5
- Caves and Ice Age Art 2.5
- Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France 2.0
- Longobards in Italy 2.0
- Fertö/Neusiedlersee 2.0
- New Lanark 2.0
- Moravian Church Settlements 2.0
- The Four Lifts 2.0
- Saltaire 1.5
- Danube Limes 1.0
- Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin 1.0
Tentative Sites
- Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
- Knights Fortifications around the Harbours of Malt
- City of York
- Mousa, Old Scatness and Jarlshof
- Birkenhead Park
- Pombaline Lisbon
- Mdina (Citta Vecchia)
- Maltese Catacomb Complexes
- Qawra/Dwejra
- Cittadella (Victoria - Gozo)
- Coastal Cliffs
- Late Medieval Bastioned Fortifications in Greece
- Ancient Greek Theatres
- Les villes bastionnées des Pays-Bas
- The Television Tower Stuttgart
- Trading Posts and Fortifications on Genoese Trade
- Le noyau historique médiéval de Gand
- Nuruosmaniye Complex
- Noyau historique d'Antwerpen -Anvers
- Le Palais de Justice de Bruxelles
- Le champ de bataille de Waterloo
- Le Panorama de la Bataille de Waterloo
- Les citadelles mosanes
- Victoria Lines Fortifications
- 107 24
- Photos
- N/A
- Locations
- N/A
- Zones
- N/A
Reviews by James Bowyer


Megalithic Temples of Malta (Inscribed)
Megalithic Temples of Malta
Whilst Malta may bear many cultural and linguistic similarities to nearby Italy and North Africa respectively, prices seem to be more influenced by the period of British rule than their …

Gorham's Cave Complex (Inscribed)
Gorham's Cave Complex
Before I was ensnared by World Heritage Sites, the geographic and cultural list that most intrigued me were the British Overseas Territories. Unfortunately, these last small vestiges of the empire …

Etruscan Necropolises (Inscribed)
Etruscan Necropolises
I have only visited one of the two components to this site, Tarquinia, and I picked it only because it was closer to a train station than Cerveteri. There was …

Champagne (Inscribed)
Champagne
I do not drink wine regularly and champagne even less so; I’m fairly sure I could count the occasions on my fingers. Therefore, I was not particularly looking forward to …

Val d'Orcia (Inscribed)
Val d'Orcia
Can I tick off this site? A philosophical question I’m sure every World Heritage traveller has asked themselves at some point. For myself and Val d’Orcia, I would say technically …

Pienza (Inscribed)
Pienza
Having sworn off guided coach tours after a poor experience in Poland, I somehow had lapse in judgement and ended up booking myself on one from Rome up to Tuscany …

Fontainebleau (Inscribed)
Fontainebleau
Having already been to Versailles and the apartments of Napoleon III in the Louvre earlier that week, palace fatigue for my week in Paris was starting to set in as …

Lake District (Inscribed)
Lake District
The Lake District is a place of superlatives for England – it’s biggest and most visited national park, it’s tallest mountain (Scafell Pike), it’s deepest lake (Wastwater), it’s largest lake …

Maritime Greenwich (Inscribed)
Maritime Greenwich
I have been to Greenwich twice now and greatly enjoyed both visits. It is readily accessible from two of London’s other WHS and, appropriately for a maritime site, the quickest …

Dorset and East Devon Coast (Inscribed)
Dorset and East Devon Coast
This was almost certainly the first World Heritage Site I ever visited, on a family holiday to Devon aged two. Therefore, I have always ticked it off on my list …

Saltaire (Inscribed)
Saltaire
Prior to 2001, somebody had clearly identified there was a gap on the list of World Heritage Sites for model villages for workers of the Industrial Revolution. I say this …

New Lanark (Inscribed)
New Lanark
The easiest way to reach New Lanark is through the old Lanark, which apparently dates back to at least 1140 as a market town during the reign of King David …

Warsaw (Inscribed)
Warsaw
It isn’t too difficult to imagine a world in which the reconstruction of Warsaw after World War II was done in such a way to make the city centre indistinguishable …

Blenheim Palace (Inscribed)
Blenheim Palace
As of April 2022, the price to enter Blenheim Palace stands at £31 per person, expensive even by the standards of the south of England. Whilst I found the interior …

Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Can… (Inscribed)
Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal
As other reviewers have noted, the name of this site is somewhat misleading as there is no such thing as the ‘Pontcysyllte Canal’. Rather then Pontcysyllte Aqueduct forms part of …

Plantin-Moretus Museum (Inscribed)
Plantin-Moretus Museum
I arrived into Antwerp from Brussels on the train and was immediately in love with the station. Ascending from the underground through platforms on enormous escalators into the cavernous space …

Torun (Inscribed)
Torun
I did not especially enjoy my time in Toruń but that was not the city’s fault. Instead, it was our coach on a day trip from Warsaw that took a …

Sighisoara (Inscribed)
Sighisoara
Sighișoara is a small Medieval fortified city, home to an array of churches, townhouses, and defensive works. The Clock Tower is the iconic structure of the city, guarding the main …

Villages with Fortified Churc… (Inscribed)
Villages with Fortified Churches
Both this site and the city of Sighișoara owe much of their existence to King Géza II of Hungary who, in the 12th Century, invited Saxon settlers to migrate to …