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This is actually a two-part site, consisting of La Fortaleza and other fortifications that make up the San Juan National Historic Site, run by the US National Parks Service. La Fortaleza is currently a building used by the Puerto Rican government and can only be visited by an advance tour. In contrast, the other areas are open to visitors with standard hours — the grounds are free and open 24/7. To go inside the two forts (El Morro and San Cristobol), it’s a joint $10 ticket (or free for two guests if you have a US annual National Parks Pass.). The two forts are a 10-15 minute walk from each other. Both are within ild town San Juan, which is pretty compact — you can cover most of it on foot in a few hours. Cabs and Ubers are hard to find, and streets are often shut down for cultural events, so it’s much easier to walk.

With that background, the two forts included in the listing are your standard Spanish/Portuguese forts from the 1500s-1700s. They’re similar to several listed properties, including El Jadida in Morocco and fortifications in Ghana (as well as a number of tentative sites). The setting for the forts in Puerto Rico is stunning, and they are in very good condition since they were used by the US military until turned into a park. Visitors have a lot of access to wander around the forts and surrounding grounds.

Gros Morne National Park has a large variety of landscapes, ranging from glaciers and fjords to freshwater lakes, tuckamore forest and coastal cliffs. I spent 2.5 days there: driving around while enjoying the views, hiking some of the trails, and doing the Western Brook Pond boat tour. From a logistical view, the park has a northern and a southern zone, separated by Bonne Bay. During my preparations, I enjoyed the lovingly detailed guidebook ‘Gros Morne National Park’ by Michael Burzynski.

In the southern zone, I did the Tablelands hike and the Green Gardens hike. Driving up there, Tablelands draws the attention right away: it’s a barren, brown mountain range among the surrounding forested ones. It looked stunning with the still remaining bits of snow and ice on its top and flanks. Its origins are fascinating too and it is an essential part of the OUV of this WHS: it is where deep ocean crust and the rocks of the earth's mantle lie exposed after having been uplifted through the action of plate tectonics. An easy, 4km return path with information panels gets you close. There is no ‘real’ soil here, only a few specialist plant species such as pitcher plants can survive.

The Green Gardens hike is a fine combination with Tablelands, as it has totally different scenery while still being only 5km or so away. This is a more strenuous hike (labeled ‘medium’, 9km return). You climb across a ridge and then descend towards the coast. Along …

I hiked from Escaldes (start from Hotel Muntanya on Avenida Carlemany close to the square with the Carmen Thyssen museum), there is a signboard Cami de la Canaleta, this is the shortcut that leads to the Repsol gasoline station, cross the road, and continue steep uphill on Cami de la Muntanya, this leads you in about 45 min to the official entrance with signboard of this UNESCO site. Around here is also a big parking, it is the same road that passes here to Engolasters, first the village with the San Miquel church, then the lake. But just to say: You can do it without renting a car in Andorra which was in my case impossible on an extended weekend Andorra was loaded with tourists, mostly from neighboring Spain. About 30 minutes into the hike from the parking comes the first waterfall, and stone houses as well.

Québec is a bit of a world of its own, and that makes it a charming place to visit. I did so together with fellow WH traveller Frédéric, who was born and raised here.

The historic center isn’t very large: we walked 9.5km in total, in just under 5 hours. Unfortunately, we didn’t see the city at its best due to persistent rain and (re)construction work going on.

Still, we managed to hit all the sights that I had prepared for:

• Parc Montmorency: an important place in the city’s history (it has been a seat of religious and civil power, a strategic military site, and the site of the first and second Parliament buildings of the United Province of Canada between 1852 and 1866), it's now an underwhelming small park with a couple of statues.
• Chateau Frontenac: the city’s icon will be in most of your pictures and you can see it from different viewpoints. It’s now a hotel, you can enter via the back. The historic boardwalk Dufferin Terrace lies in front of it.
• Côte de la Montagne is a steep, winding street that connects Upper Town and Lower Town. You can take the funicular or the Breakneck Stairs (l'Escalier Casse-Cou).
• Place Royale: the spot where Samuel de Champlain landed in 1608 and founded the first French settlement in North America. It includes the very fine Église Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, considered the oldest stone church in North America. The square and the church …

Snowy mountains, rainforests, scenic beaches, pretty lakes, waterfalls, ... -- what more could you ask for in a National Park? My family and I had a day and a half to enjoy Olympic in early June. While we were able to visit several highlights, we could have been happy filling at least 3 days. We visited:

• Crescent Lake -- a very pretty lake that's right along the main highway across the north edge of the park, so you really can't miss it. We didn't have time to do any hiking around here, just stopped to enjoy the views.
• Ruby beach -- a dramatic ocean front landscape! We planned our visit at low tide so we got to successfully hunt for green & pink sea anemones, sea stars, crabs, and more among the rocks and tide pools.
• Hoh Rainforest. Giant old trees dripping with moss. We did the 0.8 mile Hall of Mosses and 1.2 mile Spruce Nature trails. Both were beautiful and very easy hiking. There was more hiking that would have been fun to do here but we opted to visit another part of the park
• Sol Duc Waterfalls. Again, a pretty easy trail, 3.2 miles round trip to see some very pretty waterfalls. There are also hot springs near here but we didn't visit them and I think you may need reservations ahead.
• Hurricane Ridge, Hurricane Hill trail. You drive up to roughly 1 mile elevation, where you get great views of …

To get a firm grasp of Egyptian history is something that has evaded me for decades. The time spans (millennia?!) involved are just too large. Ancient Egypt starts around 3000 BCE and lasts roughly till the Romans take over around 30 BCE. In such a long timespan, you are bound to get lost with all the pharaohs, dynasties and factions.

There are only a few pharaohs I remember by heart: Hatshepsut, Ramses and Akhenaten (Echnaton in German). The later one I found the most intriguing from the start: a pharaoh undoing polytheistic traditions and practicing monotheism. Wow. Online (and disproven) legends have him exalted as the father of Judaism.

Indeed, the monotheism part is also a bit overblown. On the History of Egypt podcast, they thoroughly went through this. It seems more likely that Aten was the highest and the superior god in the Egyptian pantheon, but that lower gods were still accepted. Only god that Akhenaten seems to have explicitly banned is Amun with his powerful priesthood in Thebes.

With Thebes so tightly linked with the despised old god, Akhenaten couldn't keep his capital at Thebes/Luxor, in Amun land. Instead, he built a complete new capital down river, named Akhetaten, present day Amarna. Closest major town is Mallawi.

The dimensions of Akhetaten are mind boggling. You get a good grasp of the site standing at the Great Aten Temple overlooking the plains till the mountain ranges. That doesn't even include the Royal Tomb of …

To ‘visit’ the Rideau Canal WHS there are a couple of approaches possible: you can (1) ‘tick’ it as part of a city trip to Ottawa, (2) focus on the 5 locations in and around Kingston, or (3) spend some time following the Canal on its flow between those cities. The latter is what I did: after an overnight stay in Montreal, I drove south and visited Burritts Rapids Lock Station, Merrickville Lock Station, and Jones Falls Lock Station. This part of Ontario is a flat and green farming area, like a supersized version of the Netherlands or Northern Germany.

I started at Burritts Rapids - a small, deserted site where I was the only visitor. Here you can do the 4km long ‘Tip to tip trail’ that runs from the locks via a swing bridge to the dam. It provides a pleasant morning stroll, but the canal features are a bit underwhelming. The trail can be muddy and some parts have a lot of mosquitoes (the blood was on my arms!). It’s a good area for spotting birds (it’s very quiet), as well as squirrels and turtles (the main road even has signs warning of turtles crossing).   

Merrickville Lock Station has a very different setting: it lies in a town center. If you need to have a coffee or lunch break, this would be the best place to do so as there is little along the way or at the other locations. The eye-catcher here is the …

Amazon, heart of the planet, you'd think it's an instant 5 star visit... Not so much. The inscribed areas are rather poor, especially the ecological centers where they feed dolphins as a tourist attraction. To truly enter protected areas you will need to take a boat cruise into Jaú National Park. That means taking a 3h drive from Manaus, then traveling further in for at least a day and finally reach the ranger station.

The cruises are also super tourist driven, so I can't recommend them. Macaw watching, cayman catching, piranha fishing, visit to ruins (read: rubber baron remains, not exactly native) and shopping with a local tribe: Portuguese immigrants, not indigenous at all. To get anything more you will need to find a deep trekking tour instead and while I'm sure the Amazon is great, other places to see them are much better visits.

This is a hard site to rate: There is no doubt at all that these areas should be protected. But this site has been so "successful" with its many extensions that it has kind of ridiculed its on OUV: How can a site have OUV that has 82 locations in most European countries? The locations are so numerous that nobody can still consider unique so it would actually only be consequent to remove the site from the list! It implies the strong question how many locations a serial site can or should have (I couldn't answer this question in respect to the Compostela sites though I think definitely that a much stronger selection would improve the sites). To me it seems that serial sites and especially those with a long list of locations are increasing on the Unesco list and this seems to imply almost always a mediocre or weak site. To select one example pars pro toto (as the Nuragic momuments) or of a few outstanding examples (such as the Begijnhofs) seems the better way to go. 

The second drawback of this site is the visitor experience and once more I am amazed how a site which offers obviously little excitement to most visitors has such a high rating on our website (similar to the Limes sites which seem rather crappy apart from Hadrians Wall). In the meanwhile we have even two of those forests in Switzerland and I had once even hiked around Bettlach but I am …

N.b the excursion described in the following review did not run during 2024. The ferry business previously doing so was up for sale with no indication as to whether it will ever restart.

I report below on a way of visiting the Orkney WHS not yet described among the numerous reviews to date - a “1 day return coach tour” from John O’Groats (J O’G). We had previously visited Orkney and its WHS across several days with our own car and, if you have got that far north in UK, have never previously visited and have the time, then the islands definitely deserve more than the tour I am about to describe. On the other hand, if you are short of time, then this option is worth considering if you at least want to pick up the WHS (and a bit more!!). There is plenty written about the WHS so I will concentrate on the logistics as we investigated and experienced them other than saying that, whatever logistical choices you make, then give top priority to ensuring that you see Scara Brea!

There are 3 "short sea" ferry routes between the north coast of Scotland and the Orkneys. Unfortunately for “day trippers” the first 2 of these below operate their daily first/last sailings Southwards/Northwards respectively which reduces the “1 day island time” for those going in the opposite directions. “Last check in” is also 30 mins absolute minimum pre departure on the return - thus further reducing …

In May of 2022, I took an hour-plus out of my business-trip itinerary in Chicago to visit the buildings in this serial property. In a notable fail of the expedition, I did not read Kyle's review below prior to the walk. I assumed that all of these buildings allowed some form of easy public access to explore the interiors - and would actually have something to offer in that respect. But only a few of them do. And because I was moving northward from the southernmost of the buildings, the first five that I stopped by did not exhibit anything of value in their interiors (or could not really be entered). So, I mostly gave up and did not even attempt to enter Marquette or Rookery, which Kyle marked as the most impressive. I did step into Monadnock - only mildly interesting, certainly not anything exceptional.

From the exterior, Rookery, Fisher, and Sullivan Center (aka Schlesinger & Mayer Building, aka Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Store) exhibit the most outstanding features. Conversely, if you stand far enough from the Auditorium Building on Congress Plaza to take in its façade together with the neighboring Fine Arts Building, you may find yourself justifiably perplexed why the former - and not the richer-in-features latter - is part of the inscription (the answer likely lies in the Auditorium Theater being part of the eponymous building - but as Kyle noted, you can only see it if you attend a performance there).

I …

The Forest of Fontainebleau is huge in area (for a Central European forest) and nice to visit. The various sandstone formations scattered around, in particular the Place du Cuvier, form the birthplace of the sport of bouldering, and the landscape inspired the so-called Barbizon school of painters, who gathered in the village of the same name on the edge of the forest. However, I do not fully understand why the area should receive another WHS status. A large fraction is already protected under the WHS "Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe", including the areas around the Ermitage de Franchard, Les Gorges d’Apremont [visit/hike recommended] and Place du Cuvier. Barbizon (village) itself is nice but not unique enough in my humble opinion but that said, it does not seem to be within the nominated area anyway, which is called "Domaine de Fontainebleau: château, jardins, parc et forêt". Finally, the impressive Palace of Fontainebleau and its surrounding parks and gardens are a WHS since 1981. Thus, everything from "château" to "forêt" is already WH-protected, and I do not see the need for duplications.

I found an opportunity to visit Frederic C. Robie House in Chicago recently, which was my third visited building for this property. True to the inscription, the house exhibits discernible elements of “organic architecture” and a number of techniques and solutions that mark Frank Lloyd Wright as one of the foremost innovators of the 20th century in his field. And yet it is somewhat underwhelming once you step inside. There are lovely partially stained-glass windows throughout, notable built-in features doubling as decorative elements, and examples of impressive masonry echoing the exterior, but the relative emptiness of the house mutes the impression quite a bit.

Enthusiastic students of architecture - especially of its modern history - will certainly get significant value out of visiting Robie House. The guide provides a lot of context, historical nuggets, and rationale behind architectural decisions to make it worthwhile. Visually, Guggenheim and Fallingwater are degrees of magnitude more impressive. Even Kentuck Knob, which is not part of the WH inscription, retains a bigger visual impression in my memory a good decade after my trip there.

Robie House can be reached from the Chicago Loop area in under an hour by public transport – or in about 15 minutes by car. Guided tours run throughout the day, starting every half hour and lasting about 45 minutes. Advanced reservations are required these days.

When it comes to Guggenheim, it is my "hometown" sight - I have visited it many times over the years, most recently …

I can understand this one having a poor rating as it really shouldn't take 700+ locations to make your point. But with that many locations we are going to need a lot of reviews to figure out which ones to make an effort for.

Feb 2022, I found myself once again visiting the inlaws in Benidorm. I'll be the first to admit that as a hub it has to be one of the worst spots in the country as a base for visiting WHS but there seems to be numerous rock art locations scattered about nearby.

Rewind to 7 years ago and we attempted to visit La Sarga just outside of Alcoy but it has been fenced off. As tempted as I was to jump the fence and look on my own I am glad I didn't. This time around we came prepared. The site at La Sarga is accessible by free tours on Sundays nearly year round (Feb-Nov). You are supposed to make a reservation online for one of the hourly tours (10-1pm). The group size is 25 max but it was all so informal on site that I think you could just show up and join in. I was surprised at the popularity of the site on a random Feb Sunday with other Spaniards making up the rest of the group. The guide only spoke Spanish and I didn't understand most of it but the rock art there is about 7300 years old and without him …

We visited Ilulissat for a two day-one night stay in July 2017. An unexpected opening for a trip arose and, in what was a sad sign of the times, we said we had better go to Greenland while the ice was still there.

We arrived by plane from Reykjavik. The experience of simply flying over Greenland was something else - the ice-capped mountains, the glaciers calving into the sea, the never ending white blanket, the blue pools of water that sometimes accumulated on top of the ice, the then amazing sight of land with no ice covering at all! The plane then banked directly over the mouth of the icefjord on its approach to the tiny airport, with the majestic icebergs of Disko Bay on view in all their glory.

Arriving by taxi near midday, we amused ourselves by taking a walk at the harbour, passing the ubiquitous Irish pub, having a musk ox burger at a cafe and eyeing up the guns for sale over the counter in the local Spar shop. After some minutes at the small local Knud Rasmussen Museum (including a depressing display about how far back the glacier has retreated in recent years), we walked through the colourful houses built into the hillsides with their stilts and amongst the cotton growing wild in the town towards the mouth of the icefjord.

After clambering over the rocks, we sat for ages largely by ourselves in the sunlight and watched the multi-shaded wall …

We visited 3 of the 5 sites during our visit to Crete in Feb 2022.

Our first introduction to Minoan ruins was actually at Phaistos. It was an easy hour drive from Heraklion first thing in the morning and we had the site to ourselves. As previously mentioned the location is fantastic with great views in all directions. The site is in a state you'd expect when visiting "ancient ruins", the form is there and you can fairly easily make out all the structural elements though the only remaining artifacts are a few storage jars (pithoi) scattered about at the ends of various chambers. This site is worth a visit for anyone seriously interested in the Minoans and if it weren't part of a serial site that looks a long way off from getting inscribed could easily get in on its own.

From Phaistos we drove back to Knossos. I think visiting them in this order helped us to not find Phaistos as underwhelming as others have because it is significantly smaller than Knossos. For us it might have been the opposite as I found Knossos a little strange. It had the second highest entry fee we found in Greece (after the Acropolis) which felt unjustified. The reconstructions can be a little distracting and the story of Evans has been well told elsewhere but what I found more frustrating was that I felt like the info signs were more about the history of Evans and his work there …

I visited Chankillo in February 2020. Although my visit was very similar to Lauren's, I believe this site deserves more than a single review. Like Lauren, I visited the site at sunrise, with the help of Aleka Tours.

Before 6am, they picked me up from my hotel in central Casma in a gleaming blue dune buggy perfect for driving through the desert of the Peruvian coast. I was guided by a Spanish-speaking archaeologist and an English-speaking guide. Although the presence of the two women made the tour more interactive and complete, my level of Spanish and the archaeologist's level of English would have allowed me to understand 95% of the tour. Please take note that the road leading to the site (AN-1306 / El Castillo on Google Maps) was closed by a chain and guarded by a man at the time of our visit (and this, despite the early hour!). My memory is hazy, but I think the guide was asked to pay a fee.

We started the tour at the ruins between the 13 towers and the concentric wall structure. A platform indicates where to stand to watch the sun rise and determine the time of year. The sky was clear during my visit and I could see the sun appearing between the towers. It is impressive to think that this site was built so long ago and that these people already had a fine mastery of astronomy. We then headed towards some stone walls, ruins of …

We decided to throw ourselves into this tentative site a little more by staying in an apartment in the Barrio da Bouca in Porto, located a short walk (or two metro stops) from the centre of the city.

I rather liked the unique layout and aesthetics of the estate, squeezed into a triangle of ground, it was densely populated but provided ample space between buildings, and the units themselves were pleasant and spacious. The interiors offered design touches that separated it from your standard holiday rental. I liked the sliding wall that separates a bedroom from the main living space, and the wooden shutters across the doors and windows were both very functional and aesthetically pleasing, bringing back fond memories of Casa Barragan. 

The car park buried underneath the whole complex was a lovely solution to parking concerns in a dense urban setting. The small business units also brought some more interest to the estate, especially the lovely little architecture book shop. In the three days we stayed there we saw plenty of guided tours, seemingly for students, where lecturers were pointing out the finer details of the site.

However there certainly were flaws. The bathrooms being buried in the centre of the units must be plagued by mold (as ours was) due to the lack of fresh air and ventilation. The bannister free staircases, whilst visually appealing, certainly make this parent of a rampaging toddler very happy to live in the UK with its building codes …

On our April tour of Tunisia, we wanted to visit several TWHS’, but there wasn’t time in our schedule to visit them all. Thus, we had to choose between the 16 of them. Visiting Djerba we visited the mausoleum of Henchir Bourgou as a part of the TWHS Djerba, unconsciously we also started our Nubian mausoleum journey. The community likes for this site is a 100%! Although it’s only four votes, still a 100% is overwhelming. There are 5 elements in this nomination, and we suspect the community judgement is based on only one element, the one in Dougga. We managed to visit four elements, and did they live up too the requirements and expectations of our community?

The mausoleum of Henchir Bourgou is a very disappointing visit (lower right picture). Visually it’s almost like a pile of rocks on slightly more visual base in then semi-desert landscape with a lot of garbage around. This one is not worth an inscription, not even as a part of this serial nomination

Northbound from Djerba we were going inland Tunisia and chose to visit two more locations before visiting Dougga. First of these two were the mausoleum in Makthar. Makthar is an archaeological area (with a small museum) and we just assumed the mausoleum was inside the archaeological area. The site would open at 8 a.m. but when we arrived around 9 a.m. the gate was closed and not as soul in sight. After circling the area, taking some …

Ichkeul National Park is currently (May 2022) "closed" for unknown reasons – maybe they haven’t yet bothered to open up after Covid, or it’s because of domestic politics. It means that the official entrance with the ecomuseum is closed and access with a guide is only possible on prior request. But it is a large lake with all shorelands included in the core zone, so therefore never really inaccessible. Others visited it a few weeks ago by driving past the entrance and taking a walk from there.

I myself had come up with an even easier solution: I had seen on the map that road P11 to Bizerte runs partly along the lake. And I had to drive that P11 anyway on my move between the WHS of Dougga and my overnight stay Bizerte! In the town of Tinjah, you come closest to the shore. But a little earlier you have a good view from the road of the lake and the mountain, both called Ichkeul. It looked glittering at sunset.

Unfortunately, you don't get as close as I had thought: Tinjah is a reasonably large town, and its buildings block the view of the lake. At a bridge over a canal that connects Lake Ichkeul with that of Bizerte, I could have turned left – there the waterfront seems a bit more accessible. But because it was getting late and I wanted to be in Bizerte before dark, I just drove on.

The site was already …