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I'm not even bothering to look for fitting pictures. The site is spread out far enough that on foot you may not cover all especially as some require crossing roundabouts, but you should do the bath, villas, amphitheater and the museum. They are all covered by one ticket.

I took the train from downtown Tunis all the way across which costs hardly anything and takes for 30 minutes. Your stop will be very close to the baths.

Overall there isn't much left of the place and I've seen much better ruins. As far as I understand, and don't take my word for it, the city was destroyed in favor of keeping Dougga. It's historically still important but not impressive.

Highlights were more to see the rich area of Tunisia and great lunch at the Tennis club just nearby the museum.

"I’m struggling to understand how an original Le Corbusier building could be in that state of disrepair" was the comment from meltwaterfalls when I posted this photo of the Cité Frugès in our WhatsApp group. And I was shocked too when I visited Pessac in June 2021. To be fair, I must admit that the photo shows the worst example of disrepair. But there were a few more houses that appear to have been uninhabited for a long time and are in urgent need of renovation. And the photo also shows that the public areas, the streets and pavements are not well maintained, the whole neighbourhood looks a bit run down.However, the majority of the housing units are inhabited, some would benefit from a new coat of paint but all in all most of them are in good condition. And renovation work is in progress in some of the dilapidated houses. Thus, there is some hope that the situation will improve in the near future. Unfortunately, the information office (4 rue le Corbusier) was closed when I visited. Therefore, I could not inquire why some of the houses are in this dilapidated state and whether extensive restoration work is planned.

The Cité Frugès was built as a workers' housing estate, commissioned by the industrialist Henri Frugès. It consists of 51 housing units in three streets in Pessac, a suburb of Bordeaux. Seven types of houses can be distinguished in Pessac, including "arcades" or "zigzags". The photo shows examples of …

Although I have visited almost all West European WHS, two easy sites across the Channel had become virtually inaccessible during the Covid years. One of those is the English Lake District, an annoying miss as the site is visited by millions of tourists yearly and is also comfortably in the top 20% of most visited by our community. The best time to visit the Lake District is when it doesn’t rain and when there are no school holidays. I was rather lucky with 2 sunny weekdays in mid-April, though I did catch the final days of the Easter holidays.

As the size of the Lake District and the lack of clear focus of the WHS is a bit intimidating, I decided to allocate 2 days to it. Fortunately, near-local Solivagant suggested two driving routes. On the first day, I drove South to West, from Ambleside to Sellafield. I actually started a bit north of Ambleside, at Rydal Water. Here you can do the Lake District in a nutshell: the easy 1.5-hour hike around the lake will deliver lake views, dry stone walls, some sheep, and bare hilltops. Rydal Hall, a large country house, features the “Quiet Garden” with reference to the Picturesque period. The area is quite touristy, and people were sunbathing at and swimming in the lake.

I then drove on to the west, using the Hardknott Pass. This is England’s steepest road – and narrow it is as well. Fortunately, you can see approaching …

To repeat the previous reviewers opening remarks: this is one of THE best world heritage sites. Why only 4 stars? Because there are so many Roman ruins on the list already! You see one amphitheater you've seen them all, of sorts. 

The site is so vast it will take you 3 hours to explore and to think they haven't excavated many sections including the stadium. It's so well preserved as it never had any wars and the people lived peaceful in Dougga until the 1960s(!) building new houses within the ancient walls. At that point the culture minister finally stepped in and asked to move their shit out and you only see the ruins now. There is no money for further excavations at this point but often the gardens are restored for visitors.

The most unique thing about the site is the use of a weather compass, showing the climate depending on the wind direction. It doesn't look clear on pictures so I didn't include one. Also the site shows that stones with donation inscription for temples (they were apparently not always provided by the Empire) were reused as other walls as needed, as part of a refurbishment of town I suppose.

Overall the well maintained buildings and historical significance of having survived so long is definitely worthy of inscription.

Two things you should note:

* There are TWO entrances and the southern one doesn't open until 10am. You can still arrive here and a …

Well, almost as good as Jersulem according to the rating but just glancing through the reviews you should notice they ain't all that great.

The most breathtaking are the views. Outstanding. And slightly remote which makes it bit more challenging to tick off. There is a good reason this place opens up an hour before sunrise. So I camped at the nearby spot (no facilities but it's free, legal and helped my budget quite a bit, Israeli hotels are expensive!) and drove over to the gate at 5am in March. I wasn't alone but the other couple were slow plus not having a fancy Israeli Pass makes buying tickets a little slower too, they didn't make it up for sunrise. The hike requires a good 45min of steeeeep ascent to reach the site. The snake path is not forgiving and there are only a few places to rest and you should be pretty fit to attempt it. You don't have to reach the top to view a glorious sunrise but it's kinda the goal here. Little did I know that others had arrived from the west gate with only a 15min ramp path already. You can also stay in the inn below by the way, if comfort is required but the cable car doesn't start until 8am or something.

So, the issue is that once you reach the top there are hardly any highlights anymore. Closeup it all seems rather lackluster and uninteresting. The only thing I would …

Abu Simbel had been on my to visit list for a long time. After several community went for NYE and still being in possession of a Lufthansa 300EUR flight voucher from 2020, I decided to finally go.

Flying in from Cairo, I stayed in Aswan for 2 nights. On the first day, I visited Philae, Kom Ombo (T) and the ruins of Elephantia, ending the day drinking beer on the Nile. On my second day, I joined a way too early tour to get to Abu Simbel and then ticked of the unfinished obelisk in town proper. Due to bad planning, I missed the Islamic cemetery just across the road from the obelisk.

Both Elephantia and the Obelisk are rather normal WHS locations. It's Philae and Abu Simbel that make this a very special site. Of the components, I would rank Philae higher than Abu Simbel. The issue with Abu Simbel is that the setting feels artificial. The hill is man made. When you arrive as you have to walk around the artificial hill and it takes away from the wonder. I would assume that the original location was a scenic cliff side. While Philae was also moved, the island chosen is still an island and kept it's spirit. In addition, Abu Simbel is a 6h desert drive for a one hour visit. There is little to see apart from the two temples. ... Well, you will go anyhow.

Getting There

Luxor (and any itinerary featuring …

I visited this tentative WHS in January 2022. The site had just reopened (only Fridays till Sundays) after being closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the local administration and INAH were so happy that they charged no entrance fee for the first day, perhaps because they were almost sure that the only visitors would be locals. Unlike many other INAH archaeological sites during the COVID-19 pandemic, this one had a brand new visitor centre and museum also open and free to visit with a very good explanatory video on La Quemada and another 3 nearby sites.

The highlights of this tWHS which is quite close (around 40 minutes by car) to Zacatecas are the Salón de las Columnas with 11 rhyolite columns and the Votive Pyramid with the citadel perched high above a hill in the background. Several cacti have been planted almost created a natural loop making it very easy to visit most of the sites. The only hard part is the climb up to the citadel mostly due to the loose stones and no railings, so make sure the wear sturdy shoes.

I really enjoyed the few remains on display in the new visitor centre and if ever this tWHS were to make it on the WH list, a potential extension which would make sense and add value to this nomination, would be to also include the nearby Cerro de Teul, Las Ventanas, and Altavista.

I visited Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park on a roadtrip through southern Alberta in August 2021. In our itinerary, it was sandwiched between Dinosaur Provincial Park and Waterton Lakes National Park. On the way to the site, we took a diversion to Medicine Hat and Red Rock Coulee (interesting ochre rock concretions in the middle of the prairies). Please note that if you follow this route, there will be no gas stations after Medecine Hat. We learned this the hard way and almost ran out of gas. A long diversions to Bow Island and Route 3 was necessary. Rarely have I felt more in the middle of nowhere than in this remote corner of Alberta.

But back to Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park. We had a nice camping spot to spend the night after our long day on the road and before the next day's sightseeing. The park is very well laid out, with access to the Milk River for swimming and with shelters for rain protection and cooking (very handy on a stormy evening!). For our second day in the park, and a real day of sightseeing, we opted for the Rock Art in Áísínai'pi tour. In August 2021, this guided tour of the Archeological Preserve cost $19 per person. We met our guide at the visitor centre (where trilingual Unesco plaques and bilingual inscription certificates are located) at the appointed time and boarded the bus to the reserve. Visitors who preferred to follow the group in their cars (and thus …

I visited Kemaliye on a detour between Divrigi and Diyarbakir. The village is located in a huge canyon and thus only accessible from the north or the south. I approached from the north (1h20 drive from Divrigi.

The landscape is spectacular. The village is nice but not outstanding. It seems to be a known spot for hiking as there is tourist infrastructure and signs leading to different trails. There are many Ottoman style buildings, but most of them seemed new or so heavily renovated that they are not recognizable as historic buildings. The nicest feature of the village is the stream flowing through the village.

I understand the idea of inscribing a village from the Ottoman period. However, I am not sure Kemaliye has the outstanding value justifying an inscription.

Update Sep 2023: This was actually inscribed even though it wasn't recommended to be, but naturally the process these days is so chilled that pretty much anything is inscribed as World Heritage. Anyhow, the main reason for my update is that the sites I posted about were not included even though I thought Meninx would have something if expanded on and what a surprise that the weird "rock" wasn't inscribed. Instead they only inscribed mosques, mosques, and more mosques. Now before you get a fitty about me being anti-Muslim or something that's not my rant here at all: they are just so-so old mosques and aren't worth to be WH. The state party basically just spun this into "many people lived her over many years as you can see by religious devoted", well, that's not special and many places in the world have old, better, and more valuable mosques (or other cultural buildings). So, big thumbs down but whatcha gonna do - don't expect anything special on your day tour around Djerba and enjoy the beach resorts instead! Previous review for the tentative site is below.

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Absolutely horrible. Djerba is great for beach resorts but trying to include the crappy traces of archeology around is just pathetic. I would give it half a star. That "thing" in the top right corner is actually a site! The Meninx remains may be sort of interesting but you only see these symmetrically placed rocks... Seriously?! If you are on Djerba …

We took a trip on the Petit Train Jaune as far as the WHS of Villefranche-de-Conflent in April 2017. The timing was somewhat out of season, meaning not only were there very few passengers, but also that the train wasn’t running from Latour-de-Carol but instead from Font-Romeu-Odeillo-Via. Confusingly, the end stop is not called Villefranche-de-Conflent, but Villefranche-Vernet-les-Bains.

We had arrived driving across the border from Andorra through a tunnel. Entering the tunnel, the evening was sunny, bright and dry - exiting the tunnel in France a few minutes later, it was foggy and covered in snow! Before our overnight stay at Ur, we stopped off at the train station in Latour-de-Carol to procure information about where to get the train the following day. We had to do this as, despite many hours online research and Google Translate, the SCNF railway company’s website proved impenetrable to organising the trip in advance. A printed timetable at Latour tipped us off that the train would depart the following day from Font-Romeu (better known as a ski-resort) shortening the journey from 62km to 32km. 

However, there would be no return train and instead we would return via an hour-long bus for the seemingly incredible price of one euro. This would leave us back in Font-Romeu outside the Tourist Information office, whereas the Little Yellow Train Station was almost 5km away. So in an unusual move for us, we went to the Tourist Information Office to figure out what to do. They …

Troglodytes aren't too unique, cave dwellings are already inscribed. I don't see how much more the ones in Tunisia can offer but it does make for a great visit. The area has lots of them and they are not tourist museums but still in used by families today. The description calls them storage and granaries but they appear to be just homes. You can follow signs to visit one, pay the family some money to be shown around and try not to feel like you just intruded their lives, because it sure felt that way on my visit. If you can't find one you can always ask in town. I think I also saw one there that seemed more touristy but I had already visited two by then so I was good to continue on my journey.

Visited March 2022. After Nan could not make it in January due to snow, I guessed end of March should be no problem. That was a massive misjudgement. I arrived on a sunny day from Diyarbakir. My hopes were high, as there was no snow until Karadut. From there the snow started, but was not significant and the road was cleared. Unfortunately the last 6km were not cleared. But after I came so close I was reluctant to give up and decided to walk the last part. There were four other tourists with the same stupid idea with a few minutes head start. I quickly past them, following the road. I was unprepared for the amount of snow I was about to cross. I brought only trekking shoes instead of my hiking boots and a light jacket.

The amount of snow alternated between 5cm and 1m. I followed the footsteps of one other crazy person, trying my best not to get my feet wet. At the end of the road I found what would be the parking lot and a visitor center sunk in the snow. From there, a shuttle bus normally runs closer to the mound. Not for me of course, so I kept walking. Reaching the final stop of the shuttle bus, the path to the mound started. Unfortunately I couldn’t see any of it besides the signs.

The climb up to the mound proofed to be the hardest part as there were tons of snow …

Cinque Terre is gorgeous. These scenic villages tucked away on the Ligurian coast, wow. Still, I don't plan to ever visit again. I think I need to explain.

I have visited Cinque Terre twice. On my first visit, years ago I hiked from Corniglio to Monterosso and continued on to Genoa in the evening. In 2022; I revisited, as a friend wanted to see the place. My friend is more of a slow, thorough traveller (at least in comparison to me), so we spent two days in Cinque Terre, staying for the night in Riomaggiore. The first day was spent in Portovenere and on the biggest island. The second day was spent doing the full hike from Monterosso to Riomaggiore. As such, I would say I have seen most of the area by now, potentially missing some inland villages up in the mountains.

I prefer Cinque Terre over Portovenere and the Islands. I think what makes this WHS special is the stretch from Riomaggiore to Monterosso. My most loved town is Corniglio, but others prefer Vernazza or Manarola. Riomaggiore had the best hotel offers and we were rewarded with the great view in the picture. Monterosso meanwhile is the least traditional of the five. However, it has a beach, so it could also be a valid option.

Now, on to why I won't revisit. Cinque Terre are probably the prettiest villages/towns located in Italy. But they aren't the prettiest Italian villages/towns. Due to international tourism they have lost what makes …

We all love more Limes sites. Did you know there was a Limes in Tunisia? Interesting, but not interesting to look at, basically like the rest of the Limes aside of some special section such as Hadrian's Wall. Also I find it hard to believe the Limes in the Sahara was anything useful at the time, but like the Great Wall of China (uhhh I dared to make THAT comparison) it was meant for watchtowers to signal any incoming attack and like thr Greal Wall (yes I said it) it didn't actually work to defend a frontal attack. It was meant to protect trade routes from sub-Saharan countries and ensure goods are taxed.

There are not many places in Tunisia reachable so I picked the Muraille de Jebel Tebaga. The road will lead you right through the pass and there is a military checkpoint just north of the location. The guys there had some chuckles that I wanted to go there but told me it's only 2 more minutes down the road. Blink and you will miss it but the good news is that you can find it on Google maps so you can sort of figure out when to look up the cliffs. You can also find a small dirt road going up a hill to a tower and park there, walking up the hill to the wall. There are more sections on the opposite side as pictured but climbing up there requires extra efforts and I don't …

Visit in March 2022. 

When I began my second period of long-term travel in 2019, there were a small number of countries that I wanted to visit more than any others. One of those was Mongolia, a place that has fascinated me for decades. Accordingly, I planned a lengthy visit, to begin in July 2020, that would fit my usual travel goals, namely, to see a large portion of the country traveling by bicycle, to experience as much of its natural endowment as possible, and, of course, to visit at least two of its World Heritage Sites. I don’t need to explain why the 2020 visit never happened, and, with Mongolia closing more tightly than most other countries, it seemed certain to me that I never would be able to see that part of the World. However, after I had finally decided that I could end my wandering, I found myself still needing to cross the entire Eurasian land mass, from east to west, in a fairly expeditious manner. Just as I was about to start that process, I happily noticed that Mongolia had recently fully reopened its borders, and so I could not pass up the opportunity to finally make a stop there.

The major caveat was that, while my original plans would have involved seeing the steppes in the green flush of summer, with the concomitant increase in observable wildlife, in this case I would only be in the country for the last two weeks of …

I visited Ston a few years back and before I knew anything about UNESCO. Whilst driving along the whole coast of the Adriatic Sea I came across this really impressive site, a massive wall that reminded me of the great one in China. I had to stop and walk it. Now visually I didn’t think it was too long of a walk, but boy was I wrong. I went without any water and soon regretted it! In the scorching hot sun walking up oh so many steps I soon realised I had messed up! Luckily some people on their way back walked past and gave me some water and I was able to keep going! 

I am pretty sure that not too far from here the Croatian government intends on building a giant bridge so that tourists and locals transiting between Croatias main mainland and the Dubrovnik region without the need to first pass through Bosnia & Herzegovina (who own a tiny tiny bit of beach dividing the two mainlands), so once this has been complete I hope that it becomes a much more touristic spot as it truly deserves it!

Tassili n'Ajjer is a real gem and I couldn't rate the park less than five stars without an explanation. For now you should know: this place is not to be missed of your bucket list!

One should also know that a) the core zone is not the entire park. It is only the marked rock painting/carving spots and a rather tiny rock forest near Djanet, which is still an impressive sight but pales compared to the natural beauty of the rest the park offers, especially the plateau in the east. b) the park according to Google map is only the rocky areas which doesn't include dunes and is even not stretching into the east. c) according to locals the park even includes Djanet and surrounding villages but I am not sure if that is true.

To reach the park you should fly in with Air Algiera, not a great airline but unfortunately the only option. Once you arrive you will immediately register with the police and they will contact your guide frequently about your location, even if you go hiking on the plateau so the tour will need a satellite phone, not that the police will be able to verify your location but they will know you are safe. After all this is very close to Libya and while no impact fron the civil war is felt here you could get lost or something. Forget about driving all the way south to Djanet. Checkpoints will stop you and …

According to the Egyptian authorities, the Hathor temple at Dendera (Qena) is the best preserved Egyptian temple. From what I have seen on my trip, I would concur. The main temple is still in original state with stunning paintings and carvings on the in- and outside and a proper roof. Around the temple are plenty of less well preserved, but still interesting ruins to visit including a well and an Isis temple.

The temple alone deserves ample time to appreciate the stunning paintings. The surroundings would be interesting, too, but they are still pretty raw. I would assume that further renovations will take place.

OUV

Without doubt, this should be on the list. Based on the consistency and the state of preservation of its main temple, Dendara beats out Karnak (and that is not an easy task). The site should be called "Hator Temple at Dendera" or simply "Ancient Dendera" to encompass the full archaeological site and not just the temple.

Getting There

The easiest option is to get a driver or join a tour from Luxor. You can ask your hotel to set this up.

Alternatively, you can take a train from Luxor to Qena. Qena lies along the main railway line connecting Aswan and Cairo. At Qena station, the traffic police will organize a return cab to Dendera. No point arguing with them.

While You Are There

Luxor is a must. Near Qena, there is also a desert wadi (T). …

Only time will tell whether Marib, as a recent report suggests, really is a serious contender for inscription in 2023 - or even relatively soon thereafter, in a country riven by a long running civil and proxy war which shows no sign of ending and which is currently raging close by. We visited way back in April 1996 but it hasn’t yet been reviewed by any of the 3 “Community members” who have recorded a visit to it. The news of its possible nomination has stimulated me to do so despite the passage of so many years!

Marib was “capital” of the Semitic Sabaean Kingdom which ruled in southern Arabia from around 10th C BCE, reaching its peak between 7th/5th C BCE - the era of its great monuments including those of Ma’rib. Its wealth derived from agriculture, supported by dams such as that at Ma’rib, and trade including in frankincense. It had close links with Ethiopia and its script is related to the one used there to this day. It survived various vicissitudes through to the Common Era and was eventually overrun by Persians and Arabs. Its famed wealth was reflected in Judaic biblical stories and associated legends regarding the possibly legendary “Queen of Sheba”. These were carried through to and adapted by Islam in Surah 34 of the Quran (covering the destruction of the Marib Dam and conversion of the unnamed Queen of Saba by Solomon).

The first excavations at Ma’rib took place as recently as …