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1205 of 1223 WHS have been reviewed by our community.
The Pleistocene Occupation Sites of South Africa
Jay T USA - 22-Jan-25
It took me until my second visit to Mossel Bay, but I was finally able to visit Pinnacle Point, one of the three components of The Emergence of Modern Human Behaviour: The Pleistocene Occupation Sites of South Africa, last week. The Pinnacle Point Complex consists of a number of caves along the Indian Ocean coast that scientists believe were occupied for over 125,000 years. Of these caves, 13B is accessible to the public via a cave tour which can be booked through the Point of Human Origins website.
Read OnThe Pleistocene Occupation Sites of South Africa
Little Lauren Travels USA - 18-Jan-25
I visited one of the three inscribed sites, Pinnacle Point, near Mossel Bay. It was the only one of the inscribed sites that had readily available online information about how to visit, and it’s an easy stop when driving the Garden Route.
Tours are arranged in advance, via WhatsApp, and occur daily at 9, 11, 1, and 3. They arranged a special tour for us at an extra fee, which was so kind, to accommodate other activities in the area. The actual site is a series of caves under the golf course in a gated community. Although locals knew of the caves for some time, the archaeological assessment in connection with building the golf course led to further study. The golf course went ahead, but the caves are preserved and recently opened for visits.
Green Belt (T)
Kerstin Lange - 16-Jan-25
My first reaction to the Green Belt was puzzlement: I was looking for it on the Priwall Peninsula, the beginning or the end (depending on which way you look) of the border that cut across the German landscape during the Cold War. There were few remains of the military installations and I could see no flashy natural wonders. I realized quickly that finding it would require detective work, and that the natural wonders were of a more subtle kind than in, say, Yellowstone Park. They are, however, no less significant: over 1,200 rare and threatened plant and animal species have been documented in and along this narrow ribbon of land
Read OnToledo
2Flow2 United States - 17-Jan-25
Wow, when I went to Toledo I was not expecting it to become my new favorite city that I have travelled to in all of Spain! I visited this WHS in January 2025 during my year of living in Spain, and currently this is my favorite WHS in the country.
I used Hubert's review pretty much as a checklist guide for what to see in the city instead of trying to cross-reference a bunch of different tour guide resources online and in physical pamphlets. I was not disappointed! Out of the dozens of cathedrals I have visited in Spain, the Cathedral of Toledo is my new favorite and has the best audio guide that I've experienced. (You have to download it as a separate app.) I'm expecting the only cathedral that will rival this one will be when I visit the Sagrada Familia.
Read OnTyniec-Bielany Salwator (in and near Krakow) (T)
Andrew_Kerr UK - 14-Jan-25
After a couple of days in Krakow and visiting the depressing Auschwitz-Birkenau and Oscar Schindler sites we needed somewhere to chill out for a few hours, somewhere quiet and tranquil preferably with a scenic view, so we headed to the Benedictine Abbey of Tyniec a few miles south of the city and high above a bend of the Vistula river.We weren't disappointed, the abbey is picturesque and quiet and there's a cafe (that sells the abbey's traditional beer) and a small museum.The wider area of Tyniec-Bielany Salwator encompasses parkland, woods, riverside walks and plenty of opportunity for hikers to get out of the city and enjoy nature
Read OnBlog WH Travellers
TWHS Masters
I have added a new page in the Community Statistics section. It’s called ‘TWHS Masters’ and shows results based on Tentative Site visits as logged by our community members. I have written about TWHS before in the post “The Value of a TWHS”, where I argued that visiting TWHS is a waste of time with a success rate of 14% ever being promoted to WHS. But of course, you can visit them based on their own merits or use them to spice up your itinerary in a country.
Most TWHS visited
We start with the simple math of who has ‘ticked’ the highest number of TWHS. For this ranking it’s important to keep in mind that a considerable number of members have not logged their TWHS count: 5 from the Top 10 and 3 more from the Top 20.
Roman is the winner here. He clearly beat #2 with 80 sites. It’s the result of his long-term goal to revisit all countries one by one, covering all provinces and all WHS and TWHS as far as possible.
Some do significantly better on TWHS than on WHS, which can be seen in the overall WHS ranking displayed after their name: Christoph is 9th on TWHS and 81st on WHS, while Tony0001 is 12th on TWHS and 95th on WHS. Asked for an explanation, Tony replied that he focuses on the highlights of the region he is about to visit first and does not do trips to only cover a single WHS. Christoph points out the European countries such as Romania, Malta and Cyprus which have much more TWHS than WHS, causing the disbalance when you continue (re)visiting places in Europe. Neither of them has a specific focus on TWHS though.
Some others do significantly worse regarding TWHS than WHS, notably I do! For me, it has been a strategic choice in the past years to put my time and money first towards WHS. Other factors are my relatively low country count and maybe being more conservative in ticking because I know more about the individual TWHS having updated their pages for years.
The photo below shows New York's Central Park - the most visited TWHS (331 out of 657 members have been there).
Most TWHS across countries
Thomas holds the #1 spot, having visited TWHS in 132 countries (versus WHS in 151). It shows the width of his travels and the role (T)WHS have played in it for a long time.
The names in this list are fairly similar to those in Visited WHS in Most Countries, except those who haven’t logged their TWHS visits. What does stand out is that, overall, people have visited TWHS in some 30 countries less than where they have visited WHS, although there are 181 "countries" with a Tentative List and only 168 with inscribed sites.
So the pattern seems to be:
- visited country but not a WHS (the top-ranked all have visited 160 - 193 countries)
- visited country and at least 1 WHS (-40 countries)
- visited country and at least 1 TWHS (-30 countries)
I consider myself more of a specialist (WHS focus only), and the decline is less steep (137 visited countries, 133 with a WHS, 104 with a TWHS). I expect that Atila and Zoë will have similar, gradual patterns.
Ratio
The ratio ranking shows the number of TWHS visited divided by the number of WHS visited. These members come close to having visited as many TWHS as WHS. This can be due to a strong regional focus where not many WHS are available (I am thinking of North America), so they spend their weekends visiting TWHS whereas in Europe they'd visit WHS.
Only members with over 100 WHS visited are included due to anomalies in the lower regions. It turned out for example that Schnitzel has visited 114 times more WHS than TWHS. He really can’t be bothered!
Combi
We can also add the TWHS totals to the WHS totals, though that feels weird to me as this implies that they are worth the same (which portrays them as random 'things to tick' and strays too far from what WHS are all about). So I have included a ranking where WHS visits versus TWHS visits are weighed 3:1.
Rarely visited
Roman also stands out among the obscure TWHS, another result of his methodical approach. He has been to 166 out of the 801 TWHS that have been visited by 6 members or less. Recently he was the first to have been to the Cekeen Tumulus in Senegal, for example (Photo 3).
The number 2 has ‘only’ 62. Good scorers beyond the usual names here are Afshin Iranpour (a master of Iran's extensive Tentative List) and Christravelblog (he really did his best in the UAE and Djibouti).
Upcoming nominations
Here I present a similar prognosis to the 'armchair ticks' that may be expected in 2025, 2026 and 2027 combined. However, it also includes TWHS that are on the radar beyond 2027.
I also checked whether a difference can be found among visits to recent TWHS (since 2010) versus older TWHS (which may have less chance of getting ever inscribed). But there is no real difference, if people visit TWHS they cover both old and new.
Are there any other data points you’d like to see about TWHS visits? Or do you have any additional observations looking at this stats page?
Els - 2 February 2025
Comments
Wojciech Fedoruk 3 February 2025
Solivagant - your count improved that much because you were earlier version of Roman, visiting so many sites that are difficult even now (some actually even more difficult). Chapeau bas to your travel achievements done without Internet, GPS or credit cards .
Els - can we also see the list of essential TWHS?
Wojciech Fedoruk 2 February 2025
A bunch of new nice stats! I would love to see similar ranking of top travellers to obscure WHS. Threshold should be a bit higher, like 25 maybe.
Jay T 2 February 2025
Good topic! I take a look at TWHS whenever I'm traveling to a new region to see if there are any worth visiting, but I don't always go out of my way to visit unless they are ones that might help me better understand a region, or if they are ones that may be inscribed in upcoming years.
One of the challenges with keeping up with TWHS is that the list is constantly in flux as countries add to or retire entries. I review the list periodically throughout the year, but not regularly, to see if there are new entries for sites I've visited in the past.
Kyle Magnuson 2 February 2025
I believe about 40-50% of my visits to TWHS will be inscribed some day. I will visit the occasional TWHS only out of convenience, but others that are clearly significant with potential OUV? I will make the effort.
Additionally, I have found visits before and after inscription to be rewarding, kind of an evolution of what world heritage status can offer regarding presentation, funds, and narrative. These 2 WHS particularly come to mind as I visited multiple components before and after inscription.
- Royal Tombs of the Joseon Dynasty
- 20th Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright
Els Slots 2 February 2025
In reply to Solivagant's remarks about the high quality TWHS, I have added a ranking 'Essential' which lists the members by visits to all TWHS that have a 100% recommendation score (including Masai Mara, Carnac, Svalbard etc).
Meltwaterfalls 2 February 2025
I’m very disappointed in Schnitzel far too focused on the big sites only.
Pull your paw out mate
Solivagant 2 February 2025
In my case - "thank goodness" for those early TWHS visits (or, in many cases, even before they became TWHS)! In Jan 2019 I had visited 797 WHS......Now 854.
BUT across those 6 years, I have only visited 6 new WHS - so my count has "benefited" by 47 from TWHS! Many of these have been "world class". And there are another 40 potentially coming up it seems. I might even get to 900 if I live long enough!
We each have our own objectives and priorities when travelling. It may sound "pompous" but i prefer to use "Significance" in preference to "WHS count" if and when a clash occurs as to what should be "fitted in". We know of course that, for a range of reasons, many inscribed WHS are of far less "significance" for their values than some T List (or even non T List) sites. I have recently been discussing with Els whether she intends visiting the Mara in her upcoming Kenya trip. For reasons I fully understand (not contributing an immediate tick, cost, time etc) she has decided not to fit it in. Personally, IMO, the Mara trumps every other Kenyan WHS - even if it is not inscribed!
CugelVance 2 February 2025
Very interesting article 👍
I for my part try to visit every tentative site which is within m reach while abroad.Some ate worthy of a whs title(for example "Veliky Rostov in Russia) and some are a joke (sabka near Abu Dhabi). Nevertheless,most of them are interesting.