Cultural heritage is the legacy of tangible and intangible heritage assets of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Not all legacies of past generations are “heritage”, rather heritage is a product of selection by society.
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, scientific or other form of significance.
The ‘heritage’ can be different with three categories covering all of the sites: cultural significance, environmental significance or a combination of both.
In this, connection, the UN body- UNESCO has added 33 new sites to its World Heritage List included from a prehistoric solar observatory in Peru to some 7,000-year-old rock art in Saudi Arabia.
This year the UNESCO has listed more sites after sorting through a long list of candidacy for the World Heritage Committee met in Fuzhou, China, to vote with many participants attending virtually.
Among the added bub the UNESCO, many were in Europe includes Nice, Winter Resort Town of the Riviera, France; Padua’s fourteenth-century fresco cycles, Italy; Arslantepe Mound, Turkey; Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, a landscape of Arts and Sciences, Spain; Roșia Montană Mining Landscape, Romania; The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; The Cordouan lighthouse in Le Verdon-sur-Mer, southwestern France; Colonies of Benevolence, Belgium, Netherlands; Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, Germany; The works of Jože Plečnik in Ljubljana – Human Centred Urban Design, Slovenia; The Porticoes of Bologna, Italy; The Great Spa Towns of Europe, Austria, Belgium, Czechia, France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands, Georgia; ShUM Sites of Speyer, Worms and Mainz, Germany; Petroglyphs of Lake Onega and the White Sea, Russian Federation; Frontiers of the Roman Empire – The Lower German Limes, Germany, Netherlands.
Since the first locations were added in 1978, more than 1,000 UNESCO World Heritage Sites around the world have been added to the list from the canals of Venice to Yellowstone National Park and the Galapagos Islands.
Known as “the UNESCO effect”, it means that being added to the list can help a previously unknown destination skyrocket in popularity.
