WORLD HERITAGE SITES: TRULY GREAT PLACES

How do you decide on a list of the world’s truly great places? Well, that’s easy. Why not let UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee do the deciding for you?

The idea for a World Heritage List was first discussed in the late 1950s when the Abu Simbel temples in Egypt were threatened by the construction of the Aswan High Dam. UNESCO launched a worldwide campaign and raised $40 million of the $80 million cost for the project from 50 countries. This allowed the Abu Simbel and Philae Temples to be taken apart, moved to a higher location, and put back together piece by piece. The project was considered a success and led to other safeguarding campaigns in Venice, Pakistan, and Indonesia.

The World Heritage Committee was officially established by the United Nations in 1972 as part of the Convention on the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage. As of 2009, 890 World Heritage sites are listed: 689 culural, 176 natural, and 25 mixed properties.

Just what does World Heritage mean?

Each location listed is considered to be unique and of such universal value for all mankind that it should be safeguarded as testimony to an enduring past.

Sites are required to meet at least one of the following 10 criteria:

Cultural Criteria

• represent a masterpiece of human creative genius

• exhibit an important interchange of human values over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town planning or landscape design

• bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared

• be an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land use, or sea use which is representative of a culture (or cultures), or human interaction with the environment especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change

• be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance

Natural criteria

• contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance

• be outstanding examples representing major stages of Earth’s history, including the record of life, significant on-going geological processes in the development of landforms, or significant geomorphic or physiographic features

• be outstanding examples representing significant on-going ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, fresh water, coastal and marine ecosystems and communities of plants and animals

• contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-site conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation.

Once a place is inscribed on the World Heritage list it benefits from media attention and increased tourist revenue. It also becomes eligible for a piece of UNESCO’s preservation fund.

If you’re interested in World Heritage sites, you’re definitely going to want to take a look at Google’s Street View. Google has formed a global alliance with UNESCO to put imagery of selected sites into Street View. For more information, take a look at the video below. Nineteen sites including places in the Czech Republic, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom are already on view. More are soon to come. Visit the microsite to learn more.

You also will want to check out this drop dead gorgeous site: http://www.world-heritage-tour.org/introduction.html When you reach the site, just click on “world map” and start playing. It is really beautiful!

Posted by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe.