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I am not sure if this great TWHS is still acive (added in 2001) as I could see an activity of the Czech state party only in proposing of series of cultural lanscapes (Kladruby stud or Erzgebirge mines), or in a bit absurd apologetics of a construction of skyscrapers in Prague.

All three sites can be visited in half a day: get-off at Metro line A (green) stop Petřiny, the entrance to former game-park Hvezda is located nearby. Then descent towards Brevnov monastery, and finally walk uphill to Orechovka residential quarter with Muller Villa (there is a tram stop of lines 1 and 2 just below the Villa).

(1) Hvezda game-park and the hunting lodge have been designed by Ferdinand (II) of Tyrol, Archduke of Austria. During his stay in Prague as the Governor of Bohemia (1547-1567), the extensive constructions in the areal of Prague castle mostly the designing of huge renaissance gardens around the castle took place. Most of them have been already included to WHS Prague. The hunting-lodge Hvezda (it means STAR in Czech) was designed by the Archduke himself for his leisure activities (such as competitions in finishing a goblet of wine as fast as possible), and it can be taken as a part of this building programm. The lodge is designed in the shape of six-pointed star (see photo), and one can partly see it from distance when going from the airport to city center by bus 119. The interior is covered by fine …

The old mines of Ngwenya, inactive since 2017, claim to be the oldest mine in the world. This is because the San people used to come here to scrape iron off the rocks for those rock paintings you may have seen in other areas (including Drakensberg), as well as sunscreen would you believe it. The guide used it for his hand and says he uses is every time he comes here on a tour.

Arriving at 08:00 when they open the gate (actually I opened it but the guy came down the road a few minutes later anyway), I paid the entrance fee of 30 Rand (equals to 30 emalangeni but I didn't have any) and we drove up to the visitor center with my car. The ticket price includes a tour guide which is really great. The park also has game so you could technically pay just park entrance fee and see everything by yourself but it wouldn't be very insightful. As usually there are two staff on hand it isn't a problem if he leaves but at the moment he is alone and he actually unmanned the booth and any tourists arriving after me would have to wait for 90 minutes. I thus strongly suggest to be there at 08:00 as well. The tour is quite long because it involves some light hiking to the Lion Cavern. The visitor center unfortunately burnt down in September last year. The first stop is in front of it nethertheless to …

It's something special to stand next to one of the oldest plants in the world. Sure, trees get much older and are really epic too and I have scuba dived next to sponges and giant clams that are several thousand years old, but the location of the Welwitschia is remarkable on its own. They only grow in the Namid Desert of Namibia and Angola. Wikipedia states that the ones in Angola are better protected due to landmines. Either way, the locations are often far off the beaten track and I think the only luxurious way to see them is on the Welwitschia Trail near Swakopmund, West Namibia, a very popular tourist place alone and I believe this is the site Namibia wants to inscribe. The trail, permit required but not really checked (I like the honor system), takes you past the moon landscape with magnificent viewpoints. You can skip this and take the next road into the rough terrain but why miss this?! From Swakopmund it takes around 50min to reach the first batch of Welwitschia mirabilis. I figured they are big already but later was corrected by the kaiser of all Welwitschias. At the first small road stop they encircled some with rocks. Stepping too close on the sand will interfere with their connection the roots have with the fog-dampened upper layers and harm the plant. The ones here were already badly damaged and you can see some idiot drove right next to them and back out onto the …

Nahanni National Park might very well be the greatest national park in the world. That is a big statement, but anyone who has been to Nahanni (and few people have) can back it up.Nahanni is home to one of the world's largest waterfalls (Virginia Falls) which is higher than Niagara Falls and has a flow comparable with Victoria Falls in Africa.That alone would be enough to make it a world heritage sites. However, it is also home to the Cirque du Unclimables, which is a stunning collection of mountain peaks, and the Ram Canyon, which is one of the most impressive canyons in the world. Nahanni only gets about 800 visitors per year. There are no roads to the park, so the only way to enter is by hiking or float plane. There is also a very short season of about 2 months where visitors can enter. 

Historically, this site was a part of already inscribed The Tokaji Wine Region Historic Cultural Landscape (Hungarian WHS), which has quite low ratings in the comunity. It was divided after WWII negotiations, but there is still a controversy between Hungary and Slovakia about its status. The Slovak part of Tokaj is relatively small and comprises only 7 vilages, and it was approved as the part of Tokaj tradition and business only recently by Hungarian side. However, this area of Slovakia is still inhabited by Hungarian minority that can comunicated in Slovak language only with limitations.

The area was rather underdeveleped and abandoned as I could see during my visits in 2003 and 2013, but it might have been changed. On the other hand, the site was very tranquil and pleasingly non-touristy. I walked through vilages Velka and Mala Trna, where few wine cellars and wineshps could be visited, then we walked towards Cernochov and Bara vilages through wineyards (photo).

Even though the Slovakia part of Tokaj is a landskape of certain natural and agricultural beauty, I do not think that its inscription would enriched the list - certainly not. It would be probably helpful for marketing of Slovak Tokaj wines. The question is if it is good or bad.  

Ferrol was once the most important Arsenal in Europe. Since the 17th century, it is the capital of the northern branch of the Spanish Navy. There is no defence structure within the town, only outside, at the narrowest part of the Riba (San Felipe and Palma). The main feature is clearly the harbour with its barracks. Unfortunately, it is still an active Army zone and entry is not possible. The only buildings that are accessible and within the harbour are the Naval Museum and the Ship Construction Museum.

There is also a small park called Jardines de San Francisco from where you have a nice view over the military zone and will be able to spot some battle ships. Other than that, you are left with a rather unappealing town with some Neoclassical buildings.

I must say I did not particularly enjoy my visit, even though the Naval museum was not bad. It would come as a great surprise to me should this become a WHS.

The ancient Maya city of Palenque amazed me in its diversity. After walking in the main upper entrance, you first come across a row of pyramids. The last of these is the famous Temple of the Inscriptions, which holds King Pakal's elaborate tomb. I was disappointed that you can no longer enter this famous pyramid and the burial chamber inside. But you can enter the adjacent Pyramid/Tomb of the Red Queen for a look around.

Next, I proceeded to the huge Palace complex at the center of the site. This elaborate structure has a lot of interesting details such as the astronomical observatory tower. It has several parts to explore, as well as providing nice views over many other buildings of the city. After exploring it, I walked down to the Temple of the Count and the North Group, a set of lesser buildings that are near the site's ball court. I then made my way towards one edge of the site, visiting Group B and the Group of the Murcielagos (bats), which are some lesser buildings, but still sort of fun to wander through the small labyrinth of their remaining walls. By coming to this part of the site, you get to see the pretty cascades that form the Queen's Baths, a set of small pools along the ruins. 

Heading back up the stairs, I found the path to Group C was blocked off temporarily, so I went back through the Ball Court and past the back …

I visited Trujillo on a trip to Extremadura. I did this even before I started caring about TWHS, just because the town seemed to be a nice place to visit and indeed, it was worth the detour. The town is the birthplace of Hernan Cortez, the conqueror of the Inka Empire and honours that with a statue on the main square. Additionally, his birth house was turned into a museum. Apart from that, Trujillo is a very beautiful little Spanish town with influence on South American colonial towns. The fortress overlooking the town is certainly a highlight, but the ensemble of houses in general is very appealing.

I did not visit the Monfraguë NP or Placencia and frankly, I don’t really get the connection between the sites. There are two towns and a national park. It seems to me Spain just took 2 FTWHS and a new place and packed them into one in hope to increase chances to get at least one inscription.

Trujillo is only around a 40mins from Caceres WHS and on the way to Guadeloupe WHS, so not much effort is needed to pick it up if you are in the zone.

Tikal was the first ancient Maya site that I ever visited, and it remains my favorite one. I've since visited about 20 others, but Tikal still stands above them all. The combination of the lush jungle and the steep pyramids poking above the canopy with their delicate roof combs above the top temple rooms was just fantastic. I loved the combination of the imposing pyramids with the detailed hieroglyphic stellae and the occasional giant stucco mask. You get it all at Tikal, whereas other places, like Calakmul, for example, disappointed me a little because it didn't have much of the finer art, like stellae, while it had plenty of impressive massive buildings. When we visited Tikal (1988) you could still climb on any of the structures, although a couple of them required getting up some rickety wooden ladders. I still remember how scary it was to climb the very narrow steps and having respect for the ancient Maya who had to ascend and descend these staircases routinely

Alanya is relatively small Turkish mediterraean resort some 100 km from too much popular Antalya. I spent there my fall holydays in 2012. Weather and water-temperature were already bearable for my Central-European body in October. I must say I enjoyed my stay there. As the political situation has slightly changed in Turkey, I am afraid I am not going to travel there in near future.

The old parts of Alanya is located on the slopes of huge rock. One can walk there from the port, where the massive octogonal tower is located. There are small unmarked trails going through the area of slowly collapsing houses. The most interesting part is the huge fortress with massive walls on the top of the rock with stunning views (photo).

Though quite nice place, I cannot see any OUV there, and ancient fortresses are already represented as WHS.

Spain’s Medina Azahara won its WH status as recently as 2018 (after having been on the Tentative List for 3 years). It wasn’t a well-known destination before that, as can be read from the previous reviewers on this website who all visited a few years earlier at most. The site has been excavated from 1910 on and has been a Spanish national monument since 1923, but the real boost in visitor numbers came after the opening of the award-winning on-site museum in 2009. When I visited, on a Saturday in late March 2019, there were literally hundreds of visitors around and the overflow parking lot was in use. A significant part of the daytrippers consisted of Spanish Muslims.

Somehow not everything adds up here regarding visitor management: strapped for cash some restorations like the one of the Rich Hall have slowed down, but there still is no entrance fee charged. Other prominent Andalusian landmarks such as the Alhambra and Cordoba’s mosque-cathedral cost 14 and 10 EUR respectively. So why does Medina Azahara not profit financially from the high visitor numbers? The only paid aspect is the bus ride to the archaeological site, but this money seems to go directly to the bus company.

Nevertheless, the visit is worthwhile and I spent about 2.5 hours at the site. The museum is an attraction in itself. I especially liked the glazed ceramics with their green and manganese decorations (I had to look that last one up – it’s a metal). …

The area of the Mount Olympus National Park is accesible from tourist resorts of Olympus riviera. There are bus connections to village Litochoro that is considered as the gate to the Olympus area. From Litochoro, the most convenient is to take a cab (ca. 15 eur in 2006) to parking lot Prionia as we did. Then, we walked uphill to Spilios Agapitos Refuge, which is very convenient place to overnight and to explore the area. There are more Refuges in the area but this one is the biggest and most popular one. There is also marked trail from Litochoro uphill towards Olympus, but we decided to used it as a return-way.

When walking uphills, almost form the sea level, one can see the change of vegetation from bushes to pine forest to Alpine meadows to montaneous karst that is very impressive (photo). The highest peaks of Mount Olympus, with attitude slightly below 3000m, are located not far from Spolios Agapitos refuge, but the area of bare rocky mountains is larger, and it would require at least a couple of days to explore it properly. Anyway, the great abyss that surrounds the summits of Mytikas, Stefani and Skolio is really breath-taking. Unfortunatelly, I could not reach the top of Mytikas because of my vertigo... The entire area has prominent place in Greek mythology. Furthermore, in the broeder area of Olympus, there are also several monasteries and chapels from midle ages.

To concluded: besides the stuning natural beauty, the Mount …

Bachkovo is a mix of other monasteries I visited in the region, namely Studenica, Horezu and Rila. It is rather small and entrance is free to the monastery, with a small fee if you want to see the even smaller museum. I could not spot anything that I never saw before or that was of more beauty than I saw in similar places. The only thing special to me was the fact that I was not able to walk around the monastery from the outside and thus could only see the main façade.

However, the place seems to be very popular for the locals. The road up to the entrance is surrounded by vending stalls and there are several restaurants nearby. There were also, unlike other TWHS or even WHS in Bulgaria, many visitors on site.

The monastery is only around 40mins by car from Plovdiv, a pleasant town with 2 TWHS itself.

We visited this site on the last day of a week long visit to Nevis. It is not the most well-preserved colonial fort in the Caribbean, but there is a lot of interesting history here. The fort is difficult to access. Unless you have a car, you need a taxi or a tour. There is an audio tour for $10 US that is very informative, but probably overpriced. It is also $10 US per person to enter the site. The view is breathtaking! It would take a few hours to wander around and see everything at a leisurely pace.  

A few kilometers South of Elche lies the archaeological area named L’Alcudia. Alcudia is the Moorish name of the hill where the original Roman colony named Ilici was situated.

The site was settled already in pre-Roman times and grew under the Romans as it was designated as Colonia Iulia Ilici Augusta. Veteran soldiers of Augustus campaigns settled here. After the Roman period the Visigoths and the Byzantines controlled the town. Consequently, there are some paleo-Christian ruins on the site. After the Moors took over, they set up a separate town further north (modern day Elche) and the original town was mostly disbanded over time.

While the site does not hold any spectacular ruins, the onsite museums are quite nice and provide much needed background. The most notable find on display is a copy of the Lady of Elche, a pre-Roman bust with a very distinctive hairdo. The original is shown in Madrid.

By spanning so many periods the site enriches the history of nearby Elche, so I enjoyed visiting.

OUV

Having only seen Alcudia I can't fully judge the nomination. Alcudia certainly has regional and potentially national significance but no OUV.

If Alcudia is representative of the whole, then this is an assortment of mediocre Roman ruins. The goal here is to create OUV by finding strength in numbers; I hope this fails. In Tarragona there is already a similar site from the same region inscribed which also happened to be …

I visited in August 2017. I've read quite a lot of reviews saying that it's raining season, mating season for animals and off season where the temple of footprint is closed. But I decided to go simply because the Peak Wilderness Sanctuary is a part of WHS and set it as a goal to reach the top.

We started off late at 4am expecting not to see the sunrise because we saw the peak was surrounded by cloud the day before and knew that there won't be any sunrise. We also started light only with our rain jackets, a bottle of of water that we barely drink due to the rain, and our smartphone as torchlight as there's no light on the road.

We spot no animals on the way but heard a lot of frogs croaking from the bushes. It was raining and foggy. Our sport shoes got wet quickly but it didn't affect much of the ascent. The climb was not so hard as there are proper stairs either made of rocks or concrete. When we're half way up we already saw some hikers coming down. We've been told there's no sunrise and the temple is locked. It didn't bother us much as we already knew that and our main goal was just to reach the top.

We arrived at the top at around 7:30am and found it really foggy, and the temple was closed. While we're taking photos from the gap of the gate, …

From this serial nomination, I visited the atelier of Paul Cezanne not far from the historical center of Aix-en-Provence, and also climbed the Montagne Sainte-Victoire (photo), in July 2011. The mountain is really impresive, and no wonder that it was a favourite subject of Cezanne. It is formed by a massive limestone rock covered by typical mediterraen vegetation with the iron cross on the top. The atelier of Cezanne was quite a touristy place, and you can visit it in the former house of Cezanne surrounded by rather neglected garden (in 2011).

Though I enjoyed my trip to the summit of Montagne Sainte-Victoire and love works of Cezanne, I cannot see any OUV here. The nomination text is a bit confusing to me with quite a broad target spanning from dinosaur eggs to Cezanne, and the main reason for inscription is to protect the sites against the tourist industry. I guess it has no chance to enter the list.

However, I would strongly recommend visiting historic center of Aix that is stuffed by very nice monuments such as cathedral. Aix is not far from Marseille and it is worth-visiting even in the case you do not like both modern art and climbing limestone cliffs.   

Gros Morne National Park was the first World Heritage Site I intentionally set out to visit, and the start of my quest to visit World Heritage Sites during my travels. I learned about the park when researching a trip to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia with my father in the summer of 2006, and upon realizing that, like L'anse aux Meadows, Gros Morne was a World Heritage Site, I made a point to add it into the itinerary. I was not disappointed. Gros Morne is a place of beauty, on the rumpled west coast of Newfoundland. We stayed in Rocky Harbor for two nights, and took short trips out to look for moose and other wildlife, as well as to visit the coastal lighthouse at Lobster Cove Head. The highlight of the park, as others have noted below, was the boat tour on the inland fjord of Western Brook Pond. Waterfalls cascaded down the mountains on either side of the pond, and the mountains came to life when the sun broke through the clouds. My one regret when visiting Gros Morne is that we didn't have time to visit the Tablelands, the section of the park where the earth's mantle is exposed. I have very fond memories of Gros Morne, and I have no doubt I will return someday.

Logistics: Gros Morne National Park is rather large and best reached via private transportation.

Also called Edificio Gustavo Capanema, this edifice was built between 1937 and 1945, is a fine example of Brazilian modernist architecture. It is located in the center of Rio, it is a 3 minutes walk from Cînelandia metro station. It was designed by a team of well-known architects including Oscar Niemeyer with a supervision by Le Corbusier. The gardens, including a garden terrace, were designed by Burle Marx. Three years after completion, it was inscribed as an historical monument, thus preventing alteration the original design. I visited the building in January 2019. It was still in renovation, with fences closing access to the building. Even though, most of the building features are visible, as it rests on ten-meter pilotis and has 16 floors of iron, concrete, marble, vertical glass, natural ventilation and lights. Some facade feature portuguese-style glazed tiles. The building was completely empty, without any offices or furniture in any of its floors. Renovations are planned until 2020. The building will then host the World Congress of Architects, and Rio will be named « UNESCO World Capital of Architecture ». That could be an opportunity for inscription, but Brazil has another site planned for 2020.

Like many of the people I talked to there, getting to Easter Island and seeing its Moai was something I've wanted to do since I was a child. It totally lived up to my high expectations and I had a blast.

The big question everyone asks when planning a trip: How long should you stay there. I stayed 3 nights. For me that was about perfect. I saw all the major sites and most of the lesser ones. 4 days would have been good if I'd had the time. (Keep in mind, I was *really* into it.) A week would have been too much. I was traveling solo, so that gave me the advantage to travel around pretty quickly, not having to coordinate schedules with anyone else. Here's a summary of what I was able to see and do. 

After landing, I got a quick drive through Hanga Roa by my airbnb host. I eventually rented a bicycle for the afternoon and visited my first moai, hitting close sites like Ahu Tahai. I rode the bike over the deeply rutted and eroded dirt road north to a couple of small lava tube caves, Ana Kakenga and Ana Te Pora, and a smaller ahu, Ahu Te Peu. It was a pretty nice day, but the wind was strong, which, combined with the horrible road, made riding pretty tough. While a bike was perfect for these spots, it isn't how I'd choose to tour the rest of the island. The …