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1204 of 1223 WHS have been reviewed by our community.

Sigatoka Sand Dunes (T)

I had a day to spare between flights and like sand dunes so made a quick visit here in Sept 2024. This is an easy day trip from Nadi on public transport even on a Sunday when I went since there are still regular buses traveling along the southern route between Suva and Lautoka. The ride is a little more than an hour from Nadi and there is no official bus stop at the entrance to the dunes but the driver was able to pull over at a reasonably close distance so I could walk back along the road. On the way back to Nadi be prepared to walk a few hot km back to the Sigatoka bus station or get lucky as I did and get a lift there from a friendly local.

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Bosra

Triath - 08-Oct-24

Visited on a group tour to Syria in May 2023.

Although the city is controlled by the Free Syrian Army, but there are mutual agreements, and foreign tourists are brought here from the territories controlled by Assad. Everyone needs money.I really wanted to visit this city, because it is the last capital of the Nabataean kingdom, and after visiting Petra it was logical to get here as well, although there is little left of the Nabataeans here, only a huge gate, the same type as in Petra.In fact, the Romans built a new city here, which became the capital of the province of Arabia.The most important building of the Roman era can is the well-preserved Roman theater, although it is not so big (about 8 thousand spectators), but the stage and the rows of spectators have perfectly survived to our time

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Cold winter deserts of Turan

Mihai Dascalu Romania - 10-Oct-24

I will review here Altyn Emel National Park, visited in October 2024 as a tour from Almaty. We combined it with a trip to Tamgaly Petroglyphs. The cost was “outrageous” but we paid ($830 for 3 days in a van) and in the end we were happy with the result. It was a “minor” misunderstanding between the company who arranged it and us and the driver, he wanted to take us to Tamgaly Tas which is on the way to Altyn Emel, we caught it early and he took the Almaty ring road to Tamgaly WHS, then returned to Almaty and drove all the way to the village of Basshi (on Google maps Kalinino). It is 260 km from Almaty and generally an easy drive but in our case it was a day with 580km and we got there in the dark, not pleasant

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Hawraman/Uramanat

Zoë Sheng Chinese-Canadian - 08-Oct-24

I was driving here in the off-season which isn't a good idea in general. This is off a small road leading from Kermanshah to Sanandaj and there wouldn't really be any reason to go here but for the world heritage site. It doesn't usually drop below zero Celsius much here and you shouldn't expect snow but it's still quite chilly. You can see the valleys from this road. The actual spot to visit is called Palangan Tourist Village just aside this road. It is made very touristy on purpose although the Kurdistan formalities don't mean it's tacky or selling out. Because I came in the off-season nobody was really here or expecting tourists. The main point of interest will be viewing the valley plus the houses that rise up the mountain

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Temple of Heaven

Tony H. Finland - 07-Oct-24

I made my first trip to China in June 2024 and Temple of Heaven got the honour of being my first World Heritage Site in China. And what a fantastic site it is! I arrived by bus to the east gate of the temple (there's also a metro station here), and as there were no queues to the ticket counters, I was quickly inside of the temple area. You have option to buy a general ticket that only includes the entrance to the park area or the "all inclusive" ticket that includes the entrance to all the altars and halls of prayer. I obviously got the all inclusive ticket.

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Community Reviews.

Blog WHS website

Best Recent WHS

In last week’s blog post I referred to Padua’s Fresco Cycles and wondered why it took so long to get them inscribed. During the preparatory research, I also found out that it is the highest-rated WHS that was inscribed in the past 5 years. It got me curious to look for other recent WHS with very high ratings, and if there are any remarkable trends to discover.

Highest scores of the past 5 years

The following sites, which were inscribed in the last 5 years (2020-2024), have received the highest approval scores by the community members of this website. Remember that 2020 and 2022 had no WHC sessions. The ranking is sorted by the last column, based on the toned-down Wilson score we use on this website to deal with outliers and few votes.

Findings:

Two WHS in this bracket still suffer from too few votes to make the score representative.
The no.1 of this group only ranks #166 overall, and the no. 10 is #494!
No less than 8 out of 10 WHS are cultural.
None have reached a score of 4 or higher (equalling 'very good').

Highest scores of the past 10 years

When we repeat this for the last 10 years (2015-2024), we get the following Top 10:

Findings:

The no.1 of this group ranks as high as #10 overall, directly followed by no.2 which is at #11 overall. and the no. 10 is on #182.
The group of 10 has 4 natural WHS, 1 mixed and 5 cultural.
8 out of the 10 date from the first 5 years in this decade.
Now we already have 5 WHS with a score above 4, and the other 5 are very close to that level (3.90+).

Highest scores of the 2000s

And finally, the best-rated of this century, inscribed in 2000 or later. This covers ca. the second half of the existence of the WH List.

Findings:

The no.1 of this group still is Bagan, ranking #10 overall. The no. 10 is still as high as #45 overall.
The group of 10 has 6 natural WHS, 1 mixed and 3 cultural.
All 10 WHS are now comfortably above the threshold of 4.00.

Conclusions

Considering the findings from the 3 periods presented above, the following can be concluded:

We knew it already, but the inscriptions during the first half of the 47 years of the List's existence were ‘better’ than those of the second half: from the Top 45, 10 date from the 2000s and the other 35 from the 1900s.
But, could it also be true that sites that are 'older' are rated higher? More time has passed to let a broad group of visitors rate them, we know more about them, and all fruitful ways of approach are known to us. For example, the scores from the past 5 years don't seem stabilized yet.
The natural WHS clearly had some catching up to do, especially in the earlier 2000s, with classics such as the Norwegian Fjords, the Okavango Delta and the Namib Sand Sea only inscribed this late.
Could the latecomers also come from countries that just aren't too active on the WH front? Thinking of Namibia, Chad, Sudan, Myanmar, Botswana, and Iceland (all have 3 WHS or less and its WHS are in the Top 10 of the 2000s).
A fair number from our Missing List pop up here as well: Bagan, Ephesus, Okavango Delta, Padua, Vatnajökull, Göbeklitepe. Were these just overlooked in the decades before?

What's your take on these findings?

Els - 27 October 2024

Comments

Nan 27 October 2024

I dont think it makes sense to assume a normal distribution for ratings as everyone uses a different scale. Mine is 2.5 = deserving of WHS status.

The downward trend, at least for countries with long existing lists, seems rather natural. The obvious WHS that offer a good visiting experience have been inscribed in the past. I would assume the hidden gems would be countries that have not been active in the past.

Els Slots 27 October 2024

Maybe I can calculate a "positivity score" for each community member, Solivagant. LOL.

Solivagant 27 October 2024

actually I have just had a look at the Rankings list sorted by year and am "shocked" by just how high the ratings are - very very few below 3. Not a "normal" distribution at all!!

Solivagant 27 October 2024

and how are the "low" markings distributed across the 4 periods?

Els Slots 27 October 2024

I do recognize the overall trend you described, Solivagant.

But only looking at the "best" sites, the best ones really got in early:
The first 10 years resulted in 55 of the Top 100 best-rated.
The 2nd 10 years had 21, the 3rd 10 years had 9, the 4th 10 years had 12.

Solivagant 27 October 2024

Re "Early Inscriptions"...Els's statistics regarding the number of exceptional sites in the first 20 odd years of the scheme compared with the second can hide the fact that a fair number of the early ones were (IMO) ALSO of rather "poor quality". Particularly in the very early years. Rather than dividing the c75 years into 2 periods it might be better to look at it in total across 4 periods.
In short I would expect the most recent one to demonstrate a fair bit of "scraping the barrel" with duplications and novel (if doubtful) OUVs. That also reflects the growing politicisation of the schem and a move away from "objective" assessment by an independent body as the WHS overreuls its advisors! Whilst the first would be similar but would also contain a few of the really "high quality" sites which one would have expected to be brought forward early. The middle 2 would show the most "top sites" as, by then, most developed countries had got involved and got their act together in terms of protection, preparing nominations etc. Of course we all "mark" sites differently
As a recent post I made on Bulgaria showed, remarkably few countries were involved in the first 10 years of the scheme and they used their position to get in "mediocre" sites way ahead of real "outstanding" ones.
As for Malke Kunture - it was one of a number of early failures from Ethiopia among a number of successes (though ones like Awash and Omo would not have got in later as presented - not because they were "unworthy" but because they were not prorperly documented or managed!). Several of those are now in Eritrea (Matara and Adulis) and are not on its T List. We visted Melka Kunture in 2008 and I would not place it that highly either as an "early man visit" or in terms of its significance in those terms --- I gave it 1.5 ("just about creeps in"!!)

Els Slots 27 October 2024

I don't think you can really say that, Svein Elias. I have added the ID's and the years to https://www.worldheritagesite.org/ranking/community -> maybe Babylon is an example, but there are also plenty of poor ones with low numbers that got in in the end (As-Salt, and Melka Kunture indeed)

Zoë Sheng 27 October 2024

Mbanza Kongo only has 1 vote (!) so not sure you can add this to the findings. From the look of it (without having been) just in general it will be a low score. Perhaps a review would enlighten me with the high score.

Svein Elias 27 October 2024

Some new sites have old unesco-id, like “Melka Kunture and Balchit”. They tried to get it inscribed in the early years but were refused until now. Do you see them any different than other sites lately inscribed?