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We visited the Santa Maria delle Grazie church with Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper" mid February 2019 and can add / confirm the following to the below reviews:

Unless you are very lucky you won’t get in without a reservation and the reservation process is still ‘hit and miss’. Unless you are on a (expensive) tour which includes a visit to the Last Supper, tickets have to be booked through the Vivaticket website (https://www.vivaticket.it/eng/event/cenacolo-vinciano/26482).

The website mentions on which date tickets for the following months are released, e.g. in our case the tickets for February and March 2019 were released on December 11, 2018. Be ready to order as soon as possible on these release dates (and register in advance) since in a couple of minutes all tickets for popular days (i.e. Saturday and Sunday) will be sold out. In our case, only a timeslot including a guided tour in Italian was still available. This adds another EUR 3.5 to the EUR 12 ticket price and has to be booked separately.

When visiting the church, you first have to swap your online confirmation for a paper ticket in the ticket office. Since we booked a guided tour, we expected a guide but strangely enough this was not the case. However, we (and everyone with the same timeslot) did receive an audioguide which – since we don’t speak Italian – was a better option than a guided tour in Italian.      

It is now permitted to take pictures …

From the 16 TWHS in Belgium I had only 1 left to visit. The name of that TWHS is: Le tronçon Bavay-Tongres de la chaussée romaine Boulogne-Cologne situe sur le territoire de la Région wallonne. With the translator I understood it a little bit more: The Bavay-Tongeren section of the Boulogne-Cologne Roman road lies on the territory of the Walloon Region.

OK it is a part of a road between Bavay and Tongeren. I know there are more Tentative sites where I asked myself: How can I visit this site and what is there to see ? And this is also a strange site. After reading more about the road I saw that the road still exist. It is de N69 (high)way (Chaussée Romaine).

It seems the best to concentrate me on Tongeren, the oldest town of Belgium. Maybe there was something left of the old road ? And yes it was, but not so much. So I decided to visit Tongeren and not only some stones or a part of the N69. There is more in Tongeren (Belfries and one of the Flemish Béguinages) and I tried to make my visit so good as posible. Like almost always I parked my car on a parking of a supermarket and from there I walked to the Cesarlaan. And indeed there are remains of the old road or is it the old wall or both ? Nevertheless I did what I could.

After 50 meters walking on the …

The Olive Grove Landscapes of Andalusia is a serious candidate for WH nomination by Spain in the coming years. I have it written down for 2022, but it might have to battle with Talayotic Culture of Minorca first (things go much more slowly now only 1 nomination per country per year is allowed). It was added to the Tentative List only in 2017 and comprises a well-defined set of 15 olive grove locations of the continuing cultural landscape type. Andalusia is the world's leading olive tree grower, producing 30% of the global production of olive oil. Its 'olive history' stretches back "thousands of years": the Phoenicians introduced the cultivated olive tree, while locals already exploited the wild olive trees.

The landscape is impossible to miss when driving from Malaga to Cordoba on the A-45 past Antequera: one sees nothing but olive groves for about 100km on both sides of the road. The tentative site description calls it a "sea of olive trees" - maybe inspiration for a future Epic Subtitle?

After my visit to nearby Medina Azahara, I went to take a closer look at one of the proposed Olive Grove Landscapes: Lucena. This is a different location from the one visited by previous reviewer Nan, who choose Archidona which lies more to the south. Lucena has long links with olive production. The town has an interesting general history as well, as …

There are not many big cities in Sahara, so Agadez was always outstanding - it is located on the crossroads of trade routes North-South and East-West of the desert. Agadez was (and still is) treated by Tuaregs as their capital. Its tourist attractivity increased in the 1980s, with the increase of popularity of the Paris-Dakar Rally. Even at the beginning of the 21st century, every self-respecting globetrotter exploring West Africa stopped at Agadez, visiting nearby Tenere National Park and the Air Mountains. Air France maintained regular scheduled flights from French cities, and hotels and tourism experienced real desert in the city. Then, however, much worse times came to the region.

In 2007, another Tuareg rebellion broke out in the region, destabilizing the province and bringing several hundred deaths. Although in 2009 peace was established (with Gaddafi acting as a mediator), but soon after that Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram messed up and the situation in neighboring Mauritania, Libya and Tchad suffered a drastic deterioration. It was better in Niger itself, but it was also dangerous to go beyond Niamey and the south of the country. Tourists left Agadez for a long time.

At the moment, Western governments still issue red travel warnings to the whole Agadez region. But it turned out that Niger Airlines have regular flights from Niamey to Agadez so it could not be that dangerous and we decided to go. Ticket Niamey - Agadez and Agadez - Zinder costs approximately 330 euros per person (cannot be …

This may be my last review seeing that I will receive all the wrath from Buddhists reading this and...but wait according to Alan Partridge the only religion allowed to be made fun of are Buddhists because "they don't fight back"... besides the comical quote and the fact that real Buddhists would indeed not show anger, plenty of them may not be happy to see I'm not writing something unholy about their sacred place. Would I rate the Church of Nativity equally low? Probably not, besides the fact that the church is not even the place where JC was supposed to be born but at least you a) see a church and b) have the mythology as well. Here, in Lumbini, you get a small house that isn't original, that is SUPPOSED to have been the birth place of Lord Buddha (with zero evidence that it is true), but it also has the mythology of millions of people following the story along. They all come to pray at the stone. I respect it but at the same time I find it ridiculous that they do. Yes you can tell I'm not religious and I find it almost shameful that UNESCO places something like this on the list along with the baptist site in Jordan. Also I then have to argue why this is acceptable for the main popular religions but there is nothing for the followers of e.g. Scientology or the Mormons...

The rest of the Lumbini area is NOT …

Historical core of Žatec belongs to one of the well-preserved medieval town structures with history over 1000 years. It was only partly modified in modern times. It does not disappoint but there are better examples in Czechia. The main reason why it is proposed as WHS is the long tradition of cultivation and processing of hops in Žatec municipality that sounds interesting and refreshing taking into account that Czechs are No.1 in consummation of beer in the world. Originally, hops was dried and further processed directly within the medieval walls as documented by shape of several roofs there. The mass production of hops led to design of new neighborhood - Prague Suburb in 19th, which preserved the shape of a standard town, but consisted mostly of buildings, factories, workshops and also quite a lot of chimneys, all related to hops drying and processing.

You can find two hops related permanent exhibitions in Prague Suburb. It is better to start with the official "museum of hops". Only "advantage" of the other one - "Temple of Hops and Beer" is that you can climb the modern hops tower with nice view (photo of the core zone of Prague Suburb). The tower was very criticized by ICOMOS in the first evaluation in 2018, so, maybe the tower will be pulled down?? I do not know... If you prefer beer drinking to museums, there is in fact only one good possibility - brewery&pub close to the museum of hops (beer is very good …

Ramsar is not a typical place on World Heritage journey through Iran. For us it was almost exactly half way from Masouleh to Gonbad-e Qabus so we decided to stay there overnight. Ramsar is known from two things – first is Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, signed in 1971 (many World Heritage Sites all over the world are protected areas under this convention). Second is the fact that Ramsar has the highest natural radiation in the (inhabited) world – there are scientific investigations about its influence on people's health, but the results for now are pending.

Ramsar was extremely popular during Shah's times, it was Persian equivalent of Cannes or San Remo. This popularity was due to Shah himself (both Mohammed Reza and his father, Reza Shah, who liked this place a lot and built a summer palace here). The palace suffered a bit during Islamic Revolution but was restored and now is open for visitors. It is undoubtedly the most popular monument in Ramsar. The palace is nice, but quite small and not very spectacular comparing to its european equivalents. Even more interesting are neighbouring buildings, such as royal baths. One of the buildings was adopted to very interesting Ivory museum, with several masterpieces of art made from this material.

Although we found Ramsar quite pleasant, I cannot find anything that justifies outstanding universal value of this place. Maybe Iranian government should focus on nearby hot springs and the link to natural radiation to justify the uniqueness of …

I've been to Madrid many times over the years and on each occasion I take time to walk the length of Paseo del Prado from Plaza de Cibeles to the Atocha train station. It must be one of the most visually attractive boulevards in all of Europe. It is home to exceptional art museums, magnificent architecture, and plenty of things to catch your eye.

The stunning Palacio de Cibeles is one of the iconic sights of Madrid; the grandiose architecture is curiously discordant with the building's original unglamorous purpose as the headquarters of the Spanish Postal Service. Definitely step in to admire its Art Deco interior and ascend to the mirador for great views over the city. The other "bookend" of this stretch, Atocha, is one of the great European train stations, also worth an extended look. Museo del Prado is among the greatest art museums in the world, worth the price of admission just for its collection of Goya and Velasquez, not to mention its other many treasures. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza offers another superb art collection. And Museo Reina Sofía is primarily famous for exhibiting Picasso's Guernica, but if you are into modern art, you will find a lot of other works of value in its collection.

These are just the most obvious points of interest, but there are also eye-catching fountains, a beautiful botanic garden, and several other striking specimens of Art Deco. Puerta de Alcalá, a couple of blocks off Paseo del Prado at the …

The work of Jože Plečnik emanates a special spirit for me, though I am not able to exactly explain what it is and why it is so. I know his work already from Prague as he was the major architect of the first president of Czechoslovakia in 20s-30s of 20th century and reshaped the Prague Castle. Therefore, some of his projects and buildings are parts of WHS Prague. His church built for Prague neighborhood Vinohrady was originally the component of this nomination with Ljubljana, but it has changed after bilateral negotiations and advice of ICOMOS. Now, only several buildings, bridges, squares and one church in Ljubljana are proposed.

Plečnik was active from the break of 19/20th century as a pupil of Otto Wagner in Wiena. After WWI, his work (as well as his personality) radically changed. Thus, his style was no more Art Nouveau, but turned into a weird variation of neoclassicism and autochthonic modernism, and he was active till 50s of 20th century. Plečnik did not like functionalism and architecture with the function at all, which was no architecture in his opinion. He was influenced by theories of architects like Semper (Dresden opera) and Palladio (Vicenza). According him, real architecture should be timeless, beyond function, and it should consist of symbols recognizable for common people - therefore we can find the symbols of ancient Rome, Egypt and Etruscan era in his work (pyramids and columns everywhere). Plečnik was very, almost extremely, spiritual, ascetic and of humanistic nature. He …

Slovak and Aggtelek Karst belongs to landscapes that I had opportunity to explore several times, from both undergound and surface aspects. I visited not only 3 caves opened to public on Slovak side, but also explored karstic landscape of Slovak and Hungarian National Parks, mostly western and central parts. Well, it is written in the nomination text that only underground systems are inscribed and noting what is on the surface belongs to WHS, but both "worlds" are interconnected. Thus, one can recognize what is "down" also by picturesque karstic structures such as sinkholes and limestone pavements that are evenly scattered in the landscape of karstic plateaus. I found it also special and worth-visiting.

From inscribed caves, I visited Domica, Gombasek, and Ochtinská aragonitová caves. All of them are beautiful, and different to each other. However, after visiting of several/many caves of this and other regions, one can have a feeling that it is difficult to distinguish what cave is "more unique" than another - I can frankly say that I am not expert to recognize an uniqueness of stalagmite...

As concerns the structures visible on the surface, I found the karstic landscape of both Slovak and Aggtelek Karst National parks beautiful and quite easy to explore. There are many marked trails in the national parks. However, the area in the close vicinity around famous caves such as Domica, Ochtinska, Baradla or Gombasek is not very special - don´t be confused. One has to climb several hundred meters up …

Visited this site in March 2019. I voted for a guided tour in order to skip the hassles of bakshish boys and distances between Giza, Dahshur, Saqqara and Memphis. With early departure (07:00) and (unfortunately) skipping of certain Mastabas in Saqqara it was possible for me and my friend to cover all four sites, including interior visits to Red Pyramid; Teti Pyramid, Khufu (Cheops) Great Pyramid + Solar Boat Museum. 

There is probably not much could be added to decribe the iconic pyramids. For me the most amazing things are that in thousands of papyruses nothing is written about pyramid construction process and another thing that there is only one 3-inch tiny rough figurine of Cheops is left and known (to be compared with numerous colossal statues of Ramses II, who, in turn, saved GDP spendings of one more pyramid).  

I would recommend to arrange the guided tour in advance in order to be "protected" from sellers, trouts, bakshish boys, helpers, camel riders, etc. With our tour we were also able to enter with the car inside all 4 key sites and save a lot of time. Dahshur was the most deserted site. In Saqqara Djoser pyramid is still in scaffolding, but only on one side. I like interior chamber of Teti Pyramid covered with hieroglyphs (but looking suspiciously new).

There is no any queues for the interior chamber of Khufu (Cheops) Great Pyramid nowadays (as I understood in the past it was quite difficult to get …

Having visited central Reims including the cathedral and the Tau palace a few decades ago, this time around I came to Reims to see the Champagne Houses. The Champagne Houses are on the outskirts of town, so I did not plan to revisit the Reims WHS.

When studying the map of the area (our France country map zoomed in on Reims) I noticed a nearby blue point: the former abbey of St Remi. First I thought this referred to another component of the Champagne site. As it turns out this is part of the Reims WHS.

St Remi is the 2nd most important church in Reims. It holds the remains of St Remi, the bishop who converted Clovis (and the Francs) to Christianity. More specifically to Catholicism which at the time was competing with Arianism for primacy as Christian faith of the Francs. Although, converted may be a bit strong a word. Clovis supposedly bartered with god: "Yeah, I will join your religion. If you help me win my decisive next battle." He won and eventually he converted.

With serial nominations I am always a bit reluctant on the seemingly lesser components. But in this case I was very positively surprised. St Remi may not have the Chagall windows or the Smiling Angel, but it is a very fine church with stunning stonework and windows. It also predates the cathedral. Only downside right now is that as of toady (2019) major renovations are ongoing on the church …

I visited in December 2017 from Shiraz, taking the local bus at 2pm and arrived around 9pm.

I stayed at a local caravanserai not far from the Jame Mosque. So the first thing to do in the morning after the warm chai was to visit the Jame Mosque. It's situated in the city center with two tall Shia minarets, the tallest in Iran at 45 meters. Other than that the mosque itself was not that impressive, probable due to the worn out pale colour of the mosaic and ceilings. My main interest in that building was to look for the Zarch Payab (The Persian Qanat WHS) that took me a while to locate it. The was a signpost next to the staircase leading all the way down to the bottom with dimming light. But I was a bit disappointed when I reached the bottom where the big well was situated, as the water was not flowing and it looked it hadn't been used for a long time. It happened the same to the other qanats I went in the city. Maybe they have a modern way to extract the water now. Luckily I saw water flowing at the Kushkno Watermill (Qanat WHS). 

Other than qanat, the city is full with tall wind towers. I was there during winter but I can imagine that it must be very hot during summer time. So the locals built tall wind towers to catch the wind, whichever direction it came from. …

I visited Funchal couple of years ago. It is lively town located on slowly ascending southern coast of Madeira that is otherwise very rare in this rocky island. The town was founded in 15th century, and the historical district is still well preserved with most of the facades and pavements in typical black-and-white design. The cathedral from 15th century is quite nice but not special. Photo shows the main square with the municipal house and a fountain. What is also typical for Funchal is a massive cock-a-doodle-doo every morning as locals likely love roosters...

Though Funchal is pretty and I enjoyed my stay there, I cannot distinguish OUV of this nomination as Site of Globalization. Funchal is not outstanding. Travelling, migration, conquer, etc. belong to basic features of humankind. We could see it in many cases in the past, and we see it even now. This nomination reminds me some branches of modern art: the artefact is not visually very special, and you need to read a thick book that justify its uniqueness, which is rather abstract and cannot be recognized directly on site.

Mada'in Saleh is currently closed for ... getting ready for tourists? It says "closed for development" and the guide told me they will open it up for the general public sometime in 2020 but most of the places were available for visit with a few "renovation" piles of lights, planks, etc, and some areas are maybe off-limits and I didn't notice. A true marvel to visit nonetheless and harsh for them to close this off entirely. Comes to show that the Kingdom currently does not give a **** about tourism. However, you CAN visit if you are with a guide. They will arrange a visit for you and then it's even better because none of the visitors are here to spoil the fun - so maybe NOW is the time to try and visit?!

Stay overnight at Al Ula, the closest town with hotels. It is a long drive from Medina and you want to be here in the morning for the first light. All the rock formations and structures will be desert red and if you love taking photos you will love the first half an hour of light. Our tour started at the south gate which needs a 4WD going through the desert roads and ends up at the north gate.

All the tombs show marvelous carvings by the Nabataeans whose capital is Petra. To think it was done over 2000 years ago. Before coming the Qasr al-Farid is the main thing to see, and …

I visited in a very hot day on March 2019. I actually stay not far from the quartz ridge (around 6 km) where I get to see it everyday from my condominium balcony. But I never have time, and most importantly, friend with the same interest to discover this interesting geological formation. So only recently I managed to tick off this tentative list. 

There are two entry points to start off depends on you fitness. You can look for Kaki Bukit Tabur (West) on the GPS as this is the easy trail and you can go for the East one for advanced climbing. After ascending for around 10 minutes through the forest, you will find a lot of quartz on the ground, all over, and actually this will be the trail you'll follow on the rest of your hike. Some of the quartz are quite massive, while the others are like little crystal-like formation. Make sure you have good hiking shoes as some of the surfaces are quite sharp. Do bring a lot of water with you as there is no much shelter especially reaching the top when the sun is so hot.

You will see the Klang Gates Dam on your way up. This is the first dam in Malaysia for water supply. We also saw many species of birds, squirrels, some big ants and gibbon howling. The trail is marked by numbers sprayed on the wall so that you know how far you've got into. The …

If you want to visit World Heritage Site of Bisotun, Taq-e Bostan is just a short, half an hour detour. It consists of several properties, but the main site is located on the suburbs of Kermanshah and there is a decent hotel in walking distance. The site is very popular with locals, especially during weekends – I walked there on Saturday evening and there was a cloud of smoke from grills nearby. During daylight people come here to take pictures of neighbouring ponds, mountain and the caves.

Main site consists of two caves, covered with huge reliefs of Sassanid kings. They were made in 4th century AD and to me are very unique and one of the best examples of Sassanid art of that period. They are very spectacular and there is nothing similar to them on the Iranian WH List. What amazed me is their excellent state of preservation, very unusual for the site dated 15 centuries back. We liked this site a lot and for me it would be an excellent addition to the list (given that there are much smaller and younger reliefs on the list such as Madara Rider, it shouldn't be a problem to inscribe Taq-e Bostan).

Uhhhh, "battle zones", that alone will not bode well with any committee reviewing it for inscription into the WHS list. On my attempt to cover all three war tentative site in one year (the other two in Belgium and France are rather easy to visit anyway) I drove through Gallipoli on my way to Troy. The scenery here is beautiful. It made me think about the Mel Gibson movie a lot but actually none of the scenes were filmed in Turkey. This is an important part of ANZAC history.

The first section I came across was a cemetery. There are lots of these around the area, often split into ANZAC and Turkish cemetery sites. The roads here are really good, with some reports online worrying me they must be outdated. The roads are new and an additional bridge across the bay is now buying built to replace the ferries. My main goal was the Anzac cove, the landing area of the Anzac troops and where they had their main camps. The most interesting site here is the 'Sphinx' rock that doesn't look like anything close to the sphinx and more of a manatee/mermaid situation - you don't get out of the house much and anything looks interesting.

I recommend a drive through Gallipoli for its history and scenery but I don't believe this is world heritage criteria.

This nomination should make me happy, because it includes several sites that I like and visit at every opportunity if I am in Italy such as Siena and Viterbo. However, this is not the case and I am rather confused, I would say. I am aware of importance of Via Francigena in midle ages, and I noticed, for example in Montefiascone and other small towns of central Italy, that it is still somehow active as a modern incarnation into a tourist trail. It is certainly positive that one can move from one town to another by walk (that I really like), especially in Italy where everybody prefers car to walking...

I am however afraid that the testimony of Via Francigena is corrupted by this nomination and it will not certainly increase popularity of long-range walking. My suspicion is that it simply helps nice but not so important places in Italy to be inscibed as WHS. From the list, I visited Fidenza (nice small town in Po region with cathedral with fine sculptrural decoration on western facade), Siena (great WHS), Viterbo (one of my favorite towns in Lazio region), and obviously Rome.

Besides Via Francigena, there are comparable "sites" already in Italy: the road network from ancient Rome such as Via Appia (I can imagine OUV in this case), Camino S Francesco (I walked from La Verna to Assisi, but it continues to Rome), and also routes going to Palestina used by pilgrims and also crussaders among others (they …

Site visited recently - March, 2019.

As always in similar cases it is not easy to distinguish actual boundaries of Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP). On a road Aut - Banjaar, especially after passing Tirthan river I saw many posts suggesting that you are on the premisses of GHNP, but following the official map I think that park in this part starts only from Sairopa village located on Banjaar - Gushaini road. Reaching that place you are already in so called eco zone, but to reach core zone of GHNP you should go to Gushainin and take a 4-5 km trek from there (1,5 hours, one way).

At the beginning it a local road - take the one on the right side of the river, later on it is just a path (I didn't saw it on my mobile map, it is not also correctly shown on google maps). To reach the core zone of GHNP you should pass through 3 different hamlets (have in mind that it is easy to loose the correct way there as there are local paths to particular buildings). Boundary of GHNP is accessible after one hour hike, the first sign of national park is further kilometer ahead (Darakhali Point).

Unfortunately I did not have much time to have a bigger trek through mountains. There are agencies organising multi-day treks within GHNP. It can be done on the spot in villages (Banjaar, Saitropa, Gushaini). Any of the place can also serve as …