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Turkey still has some World Heritage status worthy entries on its T-list. But what is probably bothering Turkish politicians, is the fact that Turkey's capital is plain boring when it comes to historical sights (or any sights actually). How to get a World Heritage site to Ankara? Haci Bayram district is Ankara's best attempt. Haci Bayram-i Veli Camii is a small mosque dedicated to a Sufi poet Haci Bayram-i Veli. His tomb is next to the mosque and it's very busy with Turkish worshippers. From the outside the mosque looks old, as it is, but the inside it has been renovated clearly a lot. Original mosque is from the 15th century but the famous Mimar Sinan restored the mosque in the next century. The interior has some nice tiles and wooden decor but the modern green lighting inside gives it a weird party vibe... If you've seen any other historical mosque in Turkey, there is literally nothing new or interesting for you here.

More interesting are the ruins of a Roman temple located right next to the mosque. Temple of Augustus and Rome in Ancyra has still some walls standing which give you a clear image how this temple looked back in the Roman times. It is also the place where the best surviving copies of emperor Augustus' funerary inscriptions were found. But generally it is just a small Roman archeological site. Around the mosque and the temple ruins the neighbourhood has been turned into a some kind of …

My first visit to Bayeux (and to the city of Battle in East Essex in England) several years ago had to do with the Battle of Hastings, often regarded by historians to be the single most influencial battle in human history, which started from here in 1066.

This visit to Bayeux and to the Omaha Beach nearby in February 2020 had to do with the Battle of Normandy in 1944.

I took Bus Line 70 from the Bayeux train station to St. Laurent-sur-Mer and walked to the Omaha Beach and to the Normandy American Cemetery. 

I wasn't too keen on visiting war memorials or cemeteries, but the day presented a totally different experience from what I expected.That is not surprising when you realize that 4,500 Allied soldiers' and thousands more German soldiers' young lives perished within the 24 hours of the D-Day.

A memorial at the Omaha Beach reads, "The Allied forces landing on this shore, which they call Omaha Beach, liberated Europe - June 6, 1944."

The Normandy American Cemetery at the Omaha Beach is not just a cemetery and includes a fantastic museum and several view points out to the Beach. So if your time is limited, you can just get off the bus right at the entrance of this cemetery and see all three: the Omaha Beach, the museum and the cemetery. 

And the Memorial at the Bayeux (British Commonwealth) War Cemetery sums it up on both of the two battles …

Český Ráj (Bohemian Paradise) is the Czech classics among protected landscapes and it is used mostly and preferably for recreation, leisure time, and for rock climbing sports. The protected landscape area was established in 1955 as the first and thus the oldest one in former Czechoslovakia. Before the protection, it has been inhabited and used by humans for thousands years already. The proposed TWHS consists of the series of impressive sandstone formations called “rock cities”, thus, it is not surprising it has been already included to the list of UNESCO geoparks (since 2005).

Český Ráj is not alone among the sandstone rock cities in the central Europe. There are plenty of them, for example: the Broumov area, Bohemian-Saxonian Switzerland with surrounding Elbe sandstones, several areas in Bavaria (Frankische Schweiz) and Poland.

It should not be definitely natural WHS (only exceptional natural quality is its geology, but still it is of national importance). I can only ironically comment it that Český Ráj is the classical area of recreation for poor and middle classes, and it might be included to the serial nomination with TWHS Nice and Cote d`Azur, as also classical touristy area, but for aristocracy and rich people.

Moreover, we have another hot candidate for the inscription as a natural site in Czechia – beech forests of nearby Jizerske hory Mountains!

I visited the area (Hrubá Skála, Prachovské Skály, Malá Skála) for recreation several times, in most cases as a kid with my parents, and it …

I have been to several of the nominated towns and while I find the topic very interesting and most towns worth a visit I feel that the nomination is to big and includes too many towns with hardly any OUV. I think it would make more sense to nominate the best example(s) and not so many candidates. A good candidate from what I can see without having been there is the Czech triangle as a separate nomination. I feel the French, Belgian and Italian candidates have very little to offer and could be left out altogether. In Germany I have been to Bad Homburg, Wiesbaden and Baden Baden. All are beautiful and a nice visit but Baden Baden sticks clearly out for me: It was the most famous of the German Spa towns and had the most famous guests. The town center is, other then Wiesbaden, clearly centered around the spas and laid out in the most beautiful way along a park. It is still an active spa town and well renovated and exudes still the air of luxury and style. It even has a splendid casino, good museums and a few castles to complete the perfect spa town. I think it would make a perfect candidate on its own. Nearby Schloss Rastatt is a wonderful excursion. 

Last November I was rather excited that planning worked out and that my 200th World Heritage Site would be a natural site: Mount Etna. I had scheduled a day tour that would include an organized 4x4 vehicle drive into the core zone, but I had not counted on three factors: 1) November is within the off season for visitors; 2) the weather on the mountain can be unpredictable; and 3) my day tour was cancelled before I arrived due to a lack of other participants. I regrouped and joined a half day tour that also visited Taormina, but I couldn't help but feel let down about not getting a proper tour of the volcano.

Mount Etna is quite spectacular, dominating the east coast of Sicily. I had a great view of the snow-covered peak as I passed it twice by boat, and I had high hopes that it would be just as clear the day I visited. It was not to be. The small clouds gathering at the top of the mountain as I looked out at it from Taormina grew over the next hour, so that by the time my tour arrived at the top of the mountain I was shrouded in fog and beset by a steady wind (for which I was glad I was prepared with warm layers of clothing). The orange and yellow autumn woods made a beautiful contrast to the lava fields on the drive up the mountain, but all I could see as …

My two days in Jordan in November 2019 gave me two of the most amazing places I have ever been to. Incomparable Petra was one. And the following day, Wadi Rum. Although it is inscribed both as a natural and cultural property, Wadi Rum's awe-inspiring natural beauty bowled me over all by itself. I left practically all of the cultural aspect of it aside.

A visit to the protected area starts at the visitor center on its northern edge. If you show up without any prior accommodations for seeing the desert, you can hire a local guide on the spot. Each of them has an SUV on hand to drive you around. It should be noted that if you come in a 4×4, you can pay for a self-driving permit, but I do not expect many people to take that option. In my case, four people including me were picked up by a professional guide directly from our overnight lodgings near Petra in a closed, air-conditioned SUV, and driven to Wadi Rum and around the entire day. At first, I was disappointed with the closed aspect of our car but very quickly came to appreciate that – the sand kicked up by the wind and the vehicles would surely become a nuisance; I don’t think I would be able to enjoy the place if I was in an open-air vehicle, which is what many tourists opt for.

The standard itinerary around Wadi Rum starts at Wadi Rum village, …

I would visit only three parts of this interesting WHS till now [Nos.1-2 already described by others, but No.3 not yet] but I want to explore most of the rest in the future.

(1) Relatively big church of S Salvadore in Spoleto with surprisingly preserved stucco on the main façade and re-used ancient columns, spolia, inside, (2) in contrast very small but nicely elaborated Tempietto in Clituno (till now my favorite component of this WHS), and…

(3) Santuario di San Michele Archangelo in Monte Sant`Angelo as one of the most important pilgrim sites in Europe.

I had big expectation towards the Sanctuary during my visit of the promontory of Gargano in autumn 2018, but it was rather disappoint. We explored the parts of Gargano by foot, and I really liked that, especially (i) the broad valley of Mattinata entirely covered by ancient olive groves, (ii) Foresta Umbra with its beech forests, (iii) my favorite Monte Sacro with the ruins of SS Trinita, and (iv) beautiful town of Vieste.

So, we did a day trip from our camp in the forest on the hill just opposite to the north from Monte S`Angelo. We descended to the deep of beautiful valley and climbed the steep slope with cows enjoying their poor pastures below the Sanctuary, which we approached from the backside. From this side, it looked like the treasury of a national bank with all the high fences and cameras above the austere asphalt road. So, my romantic …

The Rietveld Schröder House is one of those really nice sites that make an interesting visit but that are at the same time so small that you can see them quite thoroughly in one or two hours. I went to Utrecht from Amsterdam. There is train several times an hour. From Utrecht Centraal you take tram number 8 to De Hoogstraat and walk five minutes. There you find a visitor centre in the house next to the RSH with nice books, souvenirs, bathrooms and an interesting movie about the creation of this house. You can certainly also buy tickets here but I would recommend to buy a ticket online in advance. Tickets seem less scarce then in the Villa Tugendhat in Brno that is sold out for month but it would still be a pity to travel here and find no ticket since you can visit the house only with a tour.I found the movie and the tour very much worthwhile since you learn a lot about the creation of the house. Normally you read that Schröder was the rich lady who paid Rietveld to build a house for her and her three kids. It seems the truth is much more complicated and more interesting: She was supposedly a kind of interior architect herself and when Rietveld presented her his first draft she didn’t like it. She had obviously a great influence on the shape of the house and on the revolutionary open space on the first floor. It seemed …

In the crossroads of modern-day Algeria, Libya and Niger, is the vast, the beautiful Tassili n'Ajjer National Park. I booked a two-hour flight from Algiers to Djanet - a 2200km+ journey that would have taken two full days (with rest and sleep stops) by land.

Mr. Hassani (Tinariwen Tours) welcomed me with a gift - a blue scarf - and instantly got me acquainted with how their group is most popularly described, Tuareg or the blue people. That cool February day, Mr. Hassani's indigo robe shone in the gold sand and brown rock forests.

"In the desert," he said, "the wind is the artist," and showed me curious geologic formations and contoured sand dunes. I went to Djanet in search of prehistoric rock art (see photo), and returned with remembrance of solitude and moments of temporary yet much-needed detachment from the material world.    

The hotel and transmitter on the top of Mountain of Ještěd belongs to the top attractions in Northern Czechia, and I visited it many times already. Reaching the summit of Ještěd by the cable car (or by walk, or by car to the nearby parking lot) is my usual half-day trip during almost every visit to the town of Liberec (in the case of good weather, of course). Other interesting places in Liberec are the main square with the huge neo-gothic municipal hall, and also both Botany and ZOO gardens.

The Ještěd Mountain is of volcanic origin, and from the orographical point of view, it is a single Mountains separated from its geological neighbors. The conically shaped transmitter on the top fits perfectly to the extinct volcano and surrounding landscape.

The hotel & transmitter represents one of the most valuable modern architecture of the second half of 20th Century in the former Czechoslovakia, and its so-called “Brussels” influences are clearly visible. The “Brussels style” was important school of design and architecture based on the Czechoslovakian contribution to the EXPO exhibition in Brussels, 1958.

I have never been accommodated in the hotel, but I usually go for lunch to the restaurant located in the round basement (PHOTO), which is an open circular space made from glass & steel.

I am maybe a little bit biased concerning this nomination, but I would be really happy if this beautiful iconic building becomes WHS in the future. However, I cannot …

There is going to be a long paragraph about logistics but first off: this HAS to be inscribed! One of the Top 20 missing in my opinion and even if you are jaded of Mayan ruins having traveled through Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and even Honduras, there is just a link missing right here. Even with an inscription I don't know if the situation regarding preservation and tourist numbers would change because it is always going to be visited by either trek or chopper.

So there are 4 sites. If you go for the trek it will take you 1 day to reach the first site, Tintal (don't know if there is a stop at Xulnal). The minibus takes you as far as it can via the dirt road through Tikal to the last guesthouse and then you walk for the rest of the day. This is not very far but you tend to have goods with you including a donkey carrying it, and because the Tintal ruins is the camp site one way or another there is no rush. This trek is not advised after rains. The second day is from Tintal to the camp at El Mirador. On the 3rd day you visit the ruins, then it is 2 days back to Flores. If you select one of the longer treks it also includes Nakbe, but I hear that doesn't happen too often. The entire thing will cost you maybe $200-300 which doesn't seem too cheap if you …

If there is a tentative site I would recommend Slovakia pushing for nomination, it would be the Chatam Sofer memorial, which for me combines several reasons of outstanding value: not only is it an important pilgrimage place for many Jews as it is a place where Moshe Sofer is burried - he was a very important Orthodox Rabbi and a founder of Bratislava's yeshiva that was moved to Jerusalem after WWII.

The Memorial is also a testament to preservation of an Old Jewish Cemetery despite efforts to destroy it completely. The area around the Bratislava Castle historically was a place where Jews could settle. However, in 1940s and afterwards new town planning projects were drawn - one constructed the bridge across river Danube (the one with the flying saucer) which caused a large part of the Old Jewish town to be demolished to make space for the access road to the bridge. Another "great" idea was to remove the Jewish cemetery to make space for a tunnel. The local community was somehow able to convince the authorities to at lease preserve a section of 23 most important tombs (including one of Chatam Sofer) - it was enclosed in concrete, below the surface of the new road. It was accessible, with a torchlight and the ceiling was very low. It is a mystery how this was done; there are many explanations including superstition or bribes.

In 2002 the site was opened and restored, with the original graves still remaining …

There is very little to add to what has already been said about Petra. It is simply one of the most wondrous places I will have ever seen in my life. I will mainly focus on logistical notes in this review.

The half-built, half-carved into rock city is spread over a huge site. My visit in November of 2019 lasted just around five hours, which allowed me to hit most of the key highlights without lingering anywhere for too long. I had to leave aside some of the farthest points in Petra, most notably the outlying Monastery.

Even those people who are aware that Ancient Petra is approached via a narrow gorge, may not realize how long that walk is. From the modern visitor center at the edge of the present-day town, it is over two kilometers through the valley and then the gorge, which varies in width from a few dozen meters to just over 10 feet, before you reach the mind-blowing sight of Al-Khazneh at the end of it. You can make part of the way on a horse (technically, free of charge, but tipping is strongly expected) and another part in a horse-pulled carriage (separate fee), but walking the distance is the only way to really appreciate its magnificence. The ground, by the way, is rather uneven, which makes the carriage ride a visibly bouncing affair; nonetheless, people of limited mobility and not only them sometimes choose riding over walking.

At the site, donkeys …

The Historic Center of Sarlat has been on France’s Tentative List since 2002. It lies in the Dordogne, in the same general area as the already inscribed Vézère Valley. Sarlat is considered to be one of the towns most representative of 14th century France, as modern times largely have passed it by and its historic district was ‘saved’ from destruction in the 1960’s by then French Minister of Culture André Malraux.

My visit was a very short one: I stayed there overnight during my visit to the Vézère Valley, but had little time to explore Sarlat itself. I did a quick dash into the city center on Saturday evening, just to get a feel for it and search for a restaurant. I wasn’t succesful with the latter: about half of the restaurants were closed for winter season and the other half were fully booked. The regional specialities here are duck breast and foie gras (the town even boasts a statue of 3 geese), so I can’t say this was really a disappointment as both food options do not appeal to me much.

What stood out was how dark the historic centre was. Except for the main shopping street, the other streets in town are barely lighted (they use fake / vintage gas lamps for this). The medieval stone town houses are mostly high and narrow, adding to the somewhat spooky atmosphere. One can surely film a medieval costume drama here, or a historic detective series.

Sarlat’s notable …

March 2017 besides the many naval orange trees, we saw a tremendous amount of olive groves on our trip. Which of these will be part of a future whs, i dont know. But looking at the map: we had a small stopover in Archidona, we spent the night on a campground in Cazorla between olivetrees, of course we visited Baeza, we passed Matorla and had breakfast in Baena. So at least we saw some of the proposed towns, which had nice settings within the olive groves. The groves we did not really visit, at least no guided Tour through olive Farms. However, olives are important for the mediterranen landscape, why not on the whs list. We are excited to see the emerging nomination.

I explored many long kilometers of Levadas during my week trip to Madeaira in January 2012. We crossed the island by walk, and naturally, these canals, designed for efficient water management of the island, were more than often only possibilities how to commute in the rocky landscape of Madeira. I have strong memories especially to 1 or even 2 km long tunnels, where your own light is a necessity, and the stream of water in Levadas is so rapid but very silent there. I think that this water management system would deserve WHS status much more that the canals in Augsburg.

The net of Levedas is quite dense and but they are diverse (I liked Levada da Janela, Levada das 25 Fontes, Levada do Risco, Levada do Paul, Levadas to the Souths from Sao Vincento, and Levadas around Ribeiro Frio, etc.). Most of them are still in use, but we saw also some parts without water. However, even dry Levadas are very useful for walking in otherwise impenetrable landscape. In the relatively small parts of central plateau, we also walked along untypical types of Levadas that are not such dramatic but still beautiful, as shown in PHOTO (parts of Levada do Paul).

During my second trip to Sicily in 2014, we visited also several Barroque towns belonging to this WHS. We went from Enna by car heading to Ragusa, where we took a hotel in the upper town, and we went through Caltagirone, but, unfortunately, we had no time to stop there. Next morning we continued further to the South and visited Modica and Scicli. After strolling in baroque towns we refreshed ourselves by swimming in Mediterranean near Pachino, spent night on the mountain above Avola and continued to Siracuse…

Thus, I explored the components of Ragusa/Ragusa-Ibla, Modica and Scicli, and I could see Caltagirone only through the car window that is not sufficient, of course.

Very recently, I checked the extent of the core zones, and I was really surprised as the inscribed parts of the towns are in some cases very different from what I thought.

In Caltagirone, the core zone is quite big and encompasses the whole central part of the town, but we crossed only the buffer zone by car…

In Ragusa, not only almost all Ragusa-Ibla but also surprisingly a big portion of the upper town including the main street below he Post office (including the hotel we were accommodated) and the junction between both districts is the part of the core zone.

In Modica, only the churches of S Giorgio (PHOTO) and S Pietro are inscribed and the rest - lower and upper towns of Modica are in the buffer zone …

I visited this TWHS after visiting the Slavonic Fortified Settlement at Mikulcice TWHS earlier in the day in January 2020. My Czech friend "R" in Brno drove me to both sites, but we didn't leave Brno until noon, so by the time we got to Luhacovice it was 4 pm. 

Luckily R says he spent some 5 years in Luhacovice when he was growing up, so he was all very familiar with this place. 

We parked his car by the city hall and walked for a few hundred meters to the main area of Luhacovice. 

During my research on the site before I mentioned to R that I was interested in going there, I could not even figure out where exactly to go in Luhacovice. But R immediately pointed out that the main place to go is called Vincentka (Photo), where we can drink the spa water as much as we wanted...although not much. 

We didn't stay in Luhacovice too long, as it was getting darker and colder. We just walked around a little, went to a few other spa water dispensers outside and came back to his car. Many of the stores along the way were closed, and R says it's much more crowded and festive in summer, even attracting such foreign guests as Germans and Russians, so I would recommend going there in summer to get the real feel of this spa town.

Among some dozen spa towns I have visited in Europe …

We visited Sambor Prei Kuk on the second out of three days of our Siem Reap Stay. Starting early again it took us about two and half hours to reach the place. Some of our fellow WHS hunters-gathereres noted their driver was similarly surprised by the place and took pictures. Ours was seasoned and told us stories of Khmer Rouge militants stopping the cars and asking tourists for money and cigarettes some years ago. Nowadays, fortunately, the whole area is cleared and safe to visit, no problems occur anymore.

Prasat Sambor Prei Kuk is a complex of temples and cluster of temples from pre-Angkorian Chenia kingdom. Our driver led us to the smaller temples first and then to the main temple ensemble. It was very pictureque and interesting, we walked along the single temple structures with couple of local tourists along. It was a pleasant visit and I enjoyed myself. There were some interesting carvings as well, one of the temples was under a scaffolding due to its structural integrity being compromised.

It was a good visit overall and though we've already seen some more substantial sites the day before, I appreaciated the site for its history but also as a secluded and quiet spot, away from the main hubub. After our visit we stopped for a lunch and went on to see the mighty Angkor Wat itself.

If you ask locals in Italy to recommend you some really authentic medieval town, they would answer Siena, of course, and also Bergamo in the North. I did a day trip to Bergamo during my visit of friends in Milan some 15 years ago. The reason was very utilitarian: we traveled with the low-cost airlines that used the airport of Bergamo instead of obvious Malpensa.

This TWHS is rather strange (as it is another TWHS Palmanova), because the entire upper town of Bergamo has been already inscribe as the Venetian works of defense WHS. However, the TWHS comprises much larger area as it includes also the lower town. Since we traveled from the airport by bus that ended by the railway station, we crossed the lower town by walk in direction much more interesting upper town. In the nomination, the contrast of both parts are praised and emphasized, but I would say that the inscription of the ancient part of Bergamo with its walls only is a reasonable compromise, because there is almost nothing to see outside the old walls. Thus, I would recommend traveling from the station to the old town by bus and skip the lower town.

The inner town is small but it was a pleasure to stroll in its narrow streets with a lot of vertical monuments (see PHOTO). The Palazzo del Podesta and the Basilica S Maria Maggiore were my highlights. I have also good memories to delicious lunch in Bergamo…

Even …