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This is a very strange nomination. Belarus proposed two churches that now have nothing in common except being in the same town of Polatsk. The first one – Saviour Transfiguration Church – is one of the oldest and most important churches in Belarus. Now it is part of the complex of the Monastery of Transfiguration and St. Euphrosine, a bit far from the center. Judging from the outside, the church is the least prominent building of the monastery (it is also the most distant from the entrance). Its real value is inside, as the whole interior is covered with original beautiful frescoes. During my visit (June 2019) the church was closed for renovation but you could look inside. The best frescoes were also presented on billboards around the church. The whole monastery is white and resembles monuments of Vladimir and Suzdal (the oldest churches there were built in the same epoque).

Please note that, as in most monasteries in Russia your outfit is strictly examined. You cannot enter in shorts but you can borrow long pants (men) or scarf and dress (women) at the entrance.

On the contrary, the St. Sophia Cathedral is located in the center of the town, next to the river Dvina. It used to be one of the oldest churches in Belarus until 1710 when, after huge explosion of ammunition stored inside the church was almost totally destroyed. It was rebuilt in the style of Vilnius Baroque in the second half of XVIIIth century …

Cidade de Goias is a tiny mining town and the former capital of the state of Goias. The town really doesn't warrant more than a one day visit. You can do a nice walk through the old colonial part of town walking up cobblestone streets to the Governor's palace (Palacio Conde dos Arcos). And if you like sweets - this town in your happy place!    

I visited from the nearby town Goiania which is a quick 30 minute flight from Brasilia. I rented a car for the easy 2 hour drive to Goias then retraced my steps to Brasilia that night. It is nice to have a car because the surrounding area is very scenic, especially along the Rio Vermelho. There is no obvious remaining evidence of the gold mining for which the town was founded in the early 18th century. 

The only reason that I can think that Goias was graced with the World Heritage designation over some others is that the colonial area remains in good shape - primarily because the town has really been left behind by Goiania.  

I'm with Ian - Brasilia fascinates me! I loved the brazen confidence that that Niemeyer showed in his design for Brazil's new capital in the 1960's. I love the pomp and circumstance that you can nearly always find in the Eixo Monumental area. I especially love sitting in the Catedral Metropolitana and just staring at the glass. In my opinion, Brasilia can be well accomplished in a long day with a lot of walking. The Praça dos Trés Poderes is the center park-like area with the key buildings surrounding the long plaza.   

If you just want to hit the most important spots, take a taxi (15 minutes without traffic), Uber or bus from the airport to the Biblioteca Nacional. From there, you can walk along the south past the Museu Nacional, Cathedral Metropolitana and on down the hill to the Congresso Nacional building and then the various palacios and monuments. At the giant flag, turn and head back up the hill to the Teatro Nacional. At a minimum, try to visit the Cathedral, Congresso and the Panteão de Patria e da Liberdade Tancredo Neves with the eternal flame and amazing view back up toward the Biblioteca.   

The Praça is especially beautiful at night when the buildings are all lit up.  

You can join a walking tour or just get a map from your hotel or visitors center and walk the area on your own. If you have time, don't miss the Santuario Dom Bosco - about 1km …

Fascinating place on the tourist island of Tenerife. About a 2 hour coach ride up from the seaside resorts. It has moonscape like elements and lots of rock formations around the slopes of the giant volcano. There is a cable car to the top of the volcano from the coach park on the higher slopes, or you can walk up if brave.

Unique environment for plants and insects at such a high altitude with the volcano rising directly from the ocean. 

We booked a coach tour from our hotel but you could easily hire a car and drive up as you would have more time to explore and not have 50 people following you in a group.

Tip: take warm clothing as it can be very cold and windy at the top even if it is scorching down in the resorts!

Avignon is quite touristy site but there is a good reason for that. Provence region is simply beautiful and Palais des Papes together with Pont d`Avignon is must-see for every tourist in the region. It has a serious drawback that Avignon has turned into a tourist trap in part. Fortunatelly, there is still relativelly tranquil places in historical parts of Avignon that embraces the inscribed core. I enjoyed also a boat trip on Rhone river.

The small core zone includes the monuments on the Rock of Doms and the adjacent torso of the bridge. All the monuments are built in two major styles - Romanesque and Gothic. As emphasized also by others, especially the Palais des Papes is an empty shell. But I enjoyed my visit despite this fact. I took it as a textbook of architecture, admired vault systems (PHOTO) and all the decorations in stone, and ignored instalations, objects and crowds inside. However, I found the huge metalic construction inside the main court of the Palace used as a podium for occassional concerts very very disturbing. The combined ticket for the Palace and the Bridge is for as much as 14.5 EUR that is quite a lot for empty rooms and for what remained from the bridge. The price includes also 3D-virtual guide, being an old school boy I refused this option. In case of Petit Palais, the entry is for free to the museum and there is a permanent exhibition of Italian art. I was surprised …

Augsburg is a great historic city with many interesting features and one would have expected a nomination of the historic centre and/or the Fuggerei (the social housing complex built by the world's wealthiest family at the time). The nomination of the water management system came as a bit of a surprise to me, but I guess this is a way to stand out from the crowd of medieval cities and to put a more unique angle on their historic heritage. It's of course not the only WH site focussing on water management, but it does give a rare overview of its historic development from Roman and medieval to modern times. Basically any visit to Augsburg will bring you in contact with this site, and it is very pleasant to walk through this historic city and admire its many beautiful buildings. First, though, I took a taxi out to the Hochablass weir on the Lech River, one of the most important sites which originally dates from the Middle Ages (the current construction is early 20th century, though). You can walk across the weir to the canoe course built for the 1972 Olympics. From there, my taxi took me back into town to the Rotes Tor (Red Gate), the oldest existing waterworks in Central Europe. From then on, it was easy to explore the city on foot. There are many canals and millwheels (at the Vogeltor) to see, plus several interesting buildings like the Stadtmetzig (17th century), which used the canal for …

August 2018- our last stop on the roadtripbefore coming back to Berlin.

Halle is a nice East German city. It has stilla lot of remains from GDR, including old advertisements, lack of renovation, some socialist buildings. Definitely worse visiting. But then there is still the Freankesche Stiftung. An historic housing complex run by the church for living, working and learning.

A nice ensemble, but for WHS i do not think it is sigificant enough.  

Interesting stop-off between Parke and Don Det if you're travelling north/south through southern Laos. Stretching 1400m up a hillside it is an interesting collection of old temples and had a air conditioned visitor centre and large carpark. The walk up the hill to the top of the site is worth it for some statues and view back over the whole site.

August 2018 - finally we visited the place where it begun and ended. Luthers Life!

The town is quite deserted, in the middle of nowhere, few young people not many shops, cafes etc, only some Luther museums.

The hot, dry summer made it even less attractive, But we were happy to have visited once. We did not pay the horendous entrance fees, but just had a glimspe from outside.

 Wittenberg, the place of work and sucess, is more interesting. Its locacted in a whs hotspot, next to the Elbe river and more significant concerning reformation. I have visited Wittenberg in 2006, 2010 and 2012. The Schlosskirche, the Melanchton house, the University, all interesting places to visit and important places in history.

Updates 2021: The state party of France wisely decided to shrink the nomination of Nimes to a single building: Maison Carrée. The new proposal will be under consideration in 2023. I really liked the former temple, Mason Carée, during my visit in 2019, and it is a pity that the surrounding forum almost did not survived: there are only minor fragments of columns shown on the square around the temple. However, it is still favorable situation than in nearby WHS Arles, where only underground porticoes (Cryptoportiques) and a small torso of the temple survived.

On the opposite side of the square, where Maison Carée is located, hyper-modern Carré d'Art has been built from concrete, steel and glass by Norman Foster in 90s.

I cannot decide if this improved nomination will defend its OUV in comparison to other Roman monuments in Mediterranean, however, my thumb UP for Maison Carée!

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I spent last week of June 2019 in (former) Languedoc-Roussillion region, mostly in Montpellier, for last three days in Nimes, and did short trips to other interesting towns nearby – Arles and Avignon.

Nimes certainly was an elegant city with great monuments such as Amphitheater and Masion Caree, but its beauty somehow shaded in comparison to its neighbors: Nimes was less lively than student town of Montpellier, in which I found also better examples of profane buildings from middle ages and later periods than in Nimes. Roman monuments of Nimes seemed somehow isolated in the rather …

A short trip to the great city of Bilbao can be easily combined with an excursion to this unique bridge. There are both metro and train lines to Portugalete and Getxo (the towns on each riverbank) and it's just a short walk from the stations. Of course, you can see its impressive silhouette from far away already. The easiest way to use the bridge is to hop on a gondola, which runs every few minutes and only costs 45 cents for pedestrians (of course more for cyclists, motorbikers and cars). The downside is that you don't see a lot of the bridge above you, so for serious visitors, a tour of the footbridge on top is recommended (10 euros). First you walk to the platform above the ticket/souvenir shop, where you will be picked up by a guide and shown the way to the lift. Once on top, you have 15 or 20 minutes to explore on your own. There are many signs, and the view of the cities, the river and the bay are great. Theoretically you could descend on the Getxo side, but the lift there was closed for maintenance when I visited. There used to be many of these bridges worldwide (you can see images of them on the platform), but not many have survived, and this one is in a very good condition. Also, it's a welcome change from Spain's usually much older WH sites.

I visited Pskov at the end of my trip to Russia in 2016. I did not expect anything special in Pskov, although wanted to visit this city, with links to the history of Poland and famous city walls. And indeed, massive city walls were the first thing that was outstanding in Pskov. The second one was its kremlin (here called Krom) which was very small comparing to Russian standards (where usually kremlins are quite broad) but one of the niciest. But honestly I had mixed feelings with the historical center – although overall it was fine, it lacked integrity and historical buildings were mixed with much newer ones. It did not help that the weather was rainy that day and at the end I got all wet.

The third outstanding thing about Pskov was the abundance of churches. During my 18-day trip I had visited hundreds of tserkvas, including iconic ones in Vladimir, Suzdal, Yaroslavl and other cities of Golden Ring, but I remember the ones in Pskov were special. They were all white with really thick walls – I bet they can survive a nuclear attack. Contrary to most of Golden Ring tserkvas, covered in frescoes, the ones in Pskov had plain white walls and roofs. They reminded me the architecture of Russian Far North, e.g. Solovetsky Islands.

I am not sure how many of now inscribed churches I visited – not so many due to bad weather. I certainly visited Church Vasiliya na gorkie (completely renovated …

Visited this ghost city during a trip in December 1989. Nobody seemed to take care of the place back then. The area was open, and no fees needed to be paid. Our group spent the night in the open air under a full moon (if I remember correctly) on top of the pavillion and we woke up with a beautiful sunrise. Arriving in the evening and leaving early morning means that it was dark most of the time we were there. It served as our campsite and we had not much time to explore the grounds, but still, it was a wonderful experience.

‘The river in the sky’ as it’s known is a marvel to behold, even in the pouring rain when I visited. I took a train to Ruabon then the number 5 bus to Trevor which drops you off about a ten minute walk from the aqueduct. Once there you can pop into the free and informative visitor’s centre which has a few videos and boards about the construction. After a decade of construction it opened in 1805 employing a cast iron trough to carry the five foot five inches deep canal 1007 feet (307 metres) across the River Dee which lies 127 feet (39 metres) below. It holds enough water to fill 16,000 baths. 

But away from the facts, the aqueduct when you venture outside and go and see it is pure engineering magic of the highest degree. Picture this in your mind. You are walking along a gentle canal, nothing untoward, past houseboats and ducks, when up ahead you see that the land disappears but the canal doesn’t. It continues, without so much of a blip, across a valley to the other side far far away. All the time though, there is a perfect line of water suspended in a flat line. You could almost believe that the land either side of the water was dug away rather than the aqueduct constructed, until you spot the iron archways and stone supports grandly lifting the water high in the sky. It simply beggars belief. There is a narrow path …

August 2018 - we started in Trier, drove along the Mosel and bought some fine wines to bring back to the family. In oder to not loose the whole day, we took a shortcut from Berkastel Kues to the Rhine and landed straight inside the cultural landscape in Bacharach. A beautiful small wooden framed town where we had good beer and Wurstsalat before driving slowly further north. First stop was at Burg Pfalzgrafenstein, called the Maus?, a former customs office inside the Rhine. Then we stopped again somewhere between Oberwesel and St. Goar, with great views at the Loreley, or rather the rock she sits at. Another stop was at Boppard and finally in Koblenz at the Deutsches Eck!

We tried to make several stops on the way, but I supoose the best way to visit this Whs is biking the whole strip from Bingen to Koblenz. By car you are definitely too fast and not flexible enough. But at least we got a good glimpse.

August 2018 - on our way back to Berlin we still wanted to vist the remaining WHS. We always planned to visit Documenta Kassel at some point, but never made it. Now we had the chance to visit Kassel. We drove sträight to the top to visit Helcules and had a stunning view over the terraces and the whole park. We drove down to the park then and had another walk and views from thepark, up to the terraces. Unfortunely a lot of construction was going on at that time. We hope to come back at some point when it is more spectacular. Maybe documenta?

It is definitely one of the more interesting and unique parks in Europe. I did not read before, when and why it was build, but good, that it got acknowledged.

Although Mompox was an important and prosperous port upriver from Cartagena, it was never very large. It hasn't really grown and has a very relaxed and lethargic atmosphere. It's no wonder rocking chairs are popular here. We quickly took over a few of our own at a little cafe and just watched the river flow by. 

Arriving in the early morning off an overnight bus, our first impressions of Mompox were not positive. Bus offices are at least a few blocks inland while the historic core runs parallel to the river and is only a few hundred meters long and about 2 blocks wide. Outside of this clean, preserved colonial core, Mompox is mostly a rundown and dirty village as far as we could tell. But the core is beautiful. The original buildings are also run down but in an atmospheric kind of way. There are three small plazas along the waterfront and the churches and old marketplace have been nicely restored. There are also boat tours along the river in the afternoon. Staying in one of the colonial homes rounds out the experience. This was the "quietest" and least developed of the major tourist sites we visited in Colombia.

Unless you really want to get lazy a day is easily enough to take in the sites. There are both early morning and overnight buses to Cartagena and we arrived on a direct overnight bus from San Gil that originated in Bogota so while it is still a …

After my second visit to Arles, I can say that I have visited all the inscribed structures and now I fully understand its OUV: (1) Amphitheatre – very impressive, and I enjoyed also exploration of the interior. (2) Antic Theatre – quite nice, but go to Orange if you want to see the well-preserved Roman theatre. (3) S Trophime cathedral and its adjacent cloister – this was my highlight. The main portal is simply masterpiece! (4) Alyscamps with S Honorat church – though tombs are not such elaborated as they are in Ravenna, I liked this burial site for its delicate atmosphere. (5) Cryptoporticus and former Roman Forum – what remained is just vast corridors in the underground, but as it was almost 45 degrees outside in June 2019 it was very refreshing visit! (6) Thermes de Constantin – this is former public baths with collapse ceiling but with several fine details. (7) Ramparts – there are few remnants of former Roman fortification between the Theatre and the Alyscamps area.

I only got the opportunity to explore the western end of this 95 mile long UNESCO World heritage coastline, but it’s enough to get a taste of the cliffs and beaches that hold stones and fossils from the Triassic, Cretaceous and Jurassic periods. Though it’s known as the Dorset and East Devon Coastline, the tourism board promote it as the Jurassic Coast, I guess thanks to Steven Spielberg and Universal. 

I was with my bike so cycled from the train station at Wool to the Durdle Door. Its picture features amongst every postcard collage along this coastline, and is a magnet for every visitor to this part of the world for its spectacular setting and for the ample opportunity it provides to amateur photographers, and by that I mean selfie-takers. It’s only a five mile ride from Wool, skirting through the lovely village of West Lulworth and past the estate of the same name which hosts the annual Bestival music festival. 

From the car park it’s a steep downward shuffle to the viewpoint and access to the beach. Like goats descending down a dusty mountainside, the other tourists and I made our ways gingerly down to two large green rubbish bins on the edge of a cliff. A slight anti-climax perhaps until you step past the giant receptacles and realise the view that welcomes you. At the left hand end of a small, sweeping bay, a pointy green hill whips its tail out into the perfectly clear waters …

Again, just as with the Tower of London, I visited Bath on a school trip with a language school so had a little less freedom than I would have liked to explore Bath with its Georgian architecture and famous Roman baths. 

The Circus and The Royal Crescent are the best examples of the architecture Bath has to offer, all built in the local Bath stone which is a beautiful sandy colour and makes the city very distinctive. I was surprised to learn that The Royal Crescent is actually just a facade and that the houses behind are of varying heights and sizes. There’s a popular green area in front of the crescent that’s very popular for picnics and photos. 

The main draw for visitors to Bath is of course the Roman baths. However, in fact not much about the Roman baths as we see it today is Roman. The baths were seemingly destroyed in the 6th century by Anglo-Saxons and subsequent renovations have given us the ‘Roman’ baths that we see today. Only the rough parts of the lower walls, some steps, and the bath itself remain from Roman days. The Romans used this place as a religious shrine dedicated to the goddess Sulis Minerva and as a spa complex, however it was Bladud, a legendary king of the Britons, who is supposed to have discovered the curing properties of Bath’s waters as a result of his leprosy disappearing while in the area. The water itself comes from …