World Heritage Site

One of the aspects that make Counting WHS more difficult than Counting Countries or Counting Regions is that the List is infinite and it will require you to backtrack to specific areas, whereas for the other lists, one visit suffices. Surely, many WH Travellers will need to retrace their steps for Umm Al-Jimal: only 28 of us made it to this recent WHS, while nearby Jerash has been seen by 121 and Quseir Amra by 174. On my 2012 Jordan trip, I covered those two as well and even Azrak Castle TWHS, but I did not make it to Umm Al-Jimal: it seemed too nondescript for a detour, as are Pella and Gadara, which also lie in the same region north of Amman.

Despite its relative obscurity, Umm Al-Jimāl has been praised as “an archaeologist’s dream”. It’s not hard to take pictures here that would make it look like a Roman-Byzantine site, and the even earlier Nabataeans passed here too, but 90% of the site consists of vernacular architecture based on locally available and finely cut basalt stones. The site museum glorifies the “indigenous people [probably Arab nomads who settled down].. who continued their traditions and were no puppets of the various rulers”; the OUV is also solely based on the rural lifestyle of these Hauranian people. At the time, around 500-800 AD, Umm Al-Jimāl was a prosperous town based on agriculture and serving the next major city of Bosra (nowadays 80km away by car since you have to find a border post into Syria, but as the crow flies or the camel walks it is only 25km).

The archaeological site still requires no entrance fee and can be entered both via the south (where a friendly tourist police station is) and the northwest (adjacent to the central street of the modern town). The south is the main entrance, and the first stop here is the small site museum. It occupies a restored house typical for the area, built with sturdy black basalt stones to withstand the heat and with the horse stables inside (photo 1). In the museum collection, the multilingual inscriptions stand out, such as the Dushara inscription on a cult stone with text in both Greek and Nabataean.

The site map displays a route along 33 monuments scattered around this vast site. The trails have no signage, so you just go out and explore, which is also one of the charms of the place. If you see an information panel, the associated building must have something of interest and you are free to walk in among the rubble. There were no other tourists present when I visited, I only saw some locals taking a shortcut through the area.  

A major remain from the Ancient Roman era is the huge reservoir, which is filled with rainwater again since the successful restoration of a water channel in 2019. This is an example of how the local Hauranian people used the site: they made good use of what was left behind from the Roman and Byzantine periods and incorporated it into their town. It can also be seen in the enthusiastic use of spolia in the domestic buildings: many houses are decorated with Christian symbols taken from the churches.

The most intact area is the western part that adjoins the modern town. Streets with rows of houses are still present, many with characteristic exterior staircases. Here, you’ll also find some of the major buildings such as the West Church (with the arches almost complete), the Cathedral and the Praetorium (possibly a Roman governor’s residence). It ends up at the Barracks.

Getting there on public transport

The site is reachable by public transport from Amman, although it’s somewhat cumbersome. First, you have to make your way to the city of Mafraq. I had read online that it is served by buses from Amman’s main North Bus Terminal, but there they told me that there are no direct buses. Instead, I was sent to a roadside minibus stop towards to the town of Al-Zarka. At its terminal, I caught a large bus filled with university students going to Mafraq. At the bus terminal in Mafraq, I changed once again to a minibus to Umm Al-Jimal. They will drop you off in front of the site entrance (after doing a confusing loop through the modern town of the same name). 

On the way back, I took the same minibus back to the Mafraq bus terminal and found a ‘white taxi’ (or servis: a shared taxi) directly to Amman. Bus rides cost between 0.5 and 1 JD, and the shared taxi was 2.5 JD per person. I had a print with me with the names of Mafraq, Umm Al-Jimal and Northern Busstation Amman written in Arabic – that was very helpful. Total travel time, including some waits, was over 2 hours on the way up and 1.5 hours coming back.

Sometimes, while working on the website or prepping for an upcoming trip, I stumble upon an old Connection that hasn’t seen a lot of updates. Often, it’s so old that I hardly remember what it is about. Only Jurre may still know about its existence! While reading up on Göbekli Tepe, I wondered why we don’t have a connection for (bas-)reliefs since they are fairly common occurrences all across the world. It turned out that we are hiding them in a connection called "Rock Cut Art".

Definition issues

I found an e-mail from Solivagant dating back to 2009, where he highlighted that a clear differentiation was needed between the various cultural connections related to the use of “Rock”.  We have:

• Monumental Monoliths: heavy pieces of rock, cut and detached from the living rock (including the obelisks of Aksum and Stonehenge).
• Cave Temples/Churches: built into natural caves with possible outside features and carving (such as those in Cappadocia).
• Rock Cut Architecture: structures carved in situ into “living rock”, not primarily based on natural caves (Petra, Ajanta, Ellora, etc).
• Petroglyphs: “line” drawings, patterns, or characters scratched, pecked, or etched into the rock (usually prehistoric, such as Valcamonica).
• And: Rock Cut Art: relief carving of rock which remains “in situ”(= attached to a solid background of the same material), but is not part of Rock Cut Architecture.

Types of Rock Cut Art

A closer look at the currently connected sites under Rock Cut Art reveals that even these 12 are not all that similar:

We have bas-reliefs depicting historical events, in the tradition of the Near East:

• Madara Rider: dating from the earliest years of the establishment of the Bulgarian state, the inscriptions around the relief are a chronicle of important events (photo 1).
• Sassanid Archaeological Landscape: Firuzabad, Fars and Bishapur have groups of Sassanian reliefs, the former including the oldest, a large battle scene.

We have sculpted stones in the Asian-Buddhist tradition:

• Polonnaruva (Gal Vihara): four rock relief statues of the Buddha, which have been carved into the face of a large granite gneiss rock.
• Mount Emei, including the Leshan Giant Buddha: the big Buddha.
• Dazu Rock Carvings: rock reliefs carved into the open rock faces (photo 2).
• Bamiyan Valley: the two monumental Buddhist statues that were carved out of a cliff.
• Gyeongju: 11 relief carvings, of which the most impressive is the Buddha Rock, a massive natural formation in the T’apkol Valley. 
• Quanzhou:  stone statue of Lao Tze. 

And we have miscellaneous others that seem not to belong in this connection:

• Atapuerca (Galeria del Silex): considering the age of the site and the limited extent, I think these should be considered petroglyphs.
• Necropolis of Bet She'arim ("the mother of all menorahs", one of many seven-branched carved stone menorahs found throughout the site): this is interior decoration of rock cut architecture (man-made catacombs).
• Rock Art in the Hail Region (Shuwaymis, "detailed and meticulously pounded figures, of one or two metres are rendered 15–20 mm deep, as bas-relief figures"): usually described as petroglyphs (and are prehistoric).
• Champagne: a series of bas-reliefs by a 20th-century artist in the Pommery cellars, sculpted in the soft chalk of the chalk pits. A modern work of art?

How can we better clarify what this connection is about?

The Rock Cut Art connection has a couple of difficulties:

1. The close resemblance to Rock Cut Architecture: although that one is aimed at monumental ‘buildings’ carved into the rock, they often contain a lot of Rock Cut Art as well (both inside and outside). So keeping this connection separate, it will never be a list of the best Rock Cut Art.
2. It focuses on a specific technique, and it is hard not to mix it with a certain cultural context. Providing that context (such as the Near East bas-reliefs) may make it clearer.
3. The recognizable feature of “relief” is not in the name; Wiki calls them Rock reliefs, and defines them as “generally fairly large, as they need to be to have an impact in the open air”. They include both the Near East and Asian variants.

In addition to “Is it carved out of a rock that is still in situ?”, we could ask for two other distinguishing features: does it show a certain craftmanship (a sculpture) and is it in the open air (aimed to impress passers-by)?

More Rock Cut Art 

Based on the refined definition above, I think the following should be added:

• Bisotun: best known for its multilingual text, but it is also a monumental bas-relief that includes an image of King Darius “holding a bow as a sign of sovereignty, and treading on the chest of a figure which lies on his back before him”. It also has a Seleucid reclining Hercules of 148 BC with a Greek inscription.
• The 'Descent of the Ganges' at Mahabalipuram: a large 7th-century Hindu scene with many figures that uses the form of the rock to shape the image (this is a stand-alone monument, not a structural part of the architecture elsewhere on the site). (photo 3)
• Sigirya: the paws at the colossal lion gateway to the hill-palace.
• Hattusa: at Yazılıkaya, a series of reliefs of Hittite gods in procession decorate open-air "chambers".
• El Fuerte de Saimapata: we now have it as part of Rock Cut Architecture, but it is only the part with the intricate carvings that is carved directly out of the natural sandstone bedrock, not the buildings surrounding it.
• Sansa's Beopjusa Temple: a Rock-carved Seated Buddha (now in Rock Cut Architecture, but the temple isn't carved from the rock).

And coming back to Gobekli Tepe …. Here, the "very substantial number of low-reliefs and carvings, mainly of animals" were carved into the T-shaped megalithic pillars that were cut out of a rock elsewhere. So, not "in situ" and, thus, Out.

What do you think of this Connection? Should we rename it, split it, or include it with Rock Cut Architecture?

I have been thinking lately about “Windows of Opportunity”, and whether they truly exist in a travel planning context. Windows of Opportunity are circumstances that suddenly present themselves and that may not happen again – so you need to react promptly to take advantage. This could be because an armed conflict ends or travel bans get lifted. For example: after the recent regime change in Syria, the Ancient Villages of Northern Syria have become accessible for the first time in about 14 years (trips to Serjella and Al-Bara are advertised). And a first international group visited North Korea in February 2025 after 5 years of Covid-closure. 

I wonder however what these opportunities across a lifetime of WH Travel really mean. Should you go to Syria now in 2025 and put yourself on the waitlist for North Korea?

Windows of countries and sites

With the recent reopening of North Korea, every country is theoretically visitable again (though getting a tourist visa to Sudan or Niger may be tough). (Un)fortunately, as WH Travellers we need to get much deeper into a country than a border or a capital, so certainly not every WHS is visitable at the moment. 

To gain an understanding of the impact of country and site "closures", let’s have a look at a few examples from the US naughty list:

• Iraq: Tourism to Iraq in general has almost always continued over the past difficult decades, but the numbers were mostly in Iraqi Kurdistan and at the Shia holy sites. Most WHS were off-limits during the US-led invasion of 2003 and its ISIS aftermath as they were right in the battle zones (it must be noted that 4 out of the 6 were only inscribed after 2003, so they wouldn’t have featured in WH travel plans anyway). Hatra and Ashur (Photo 1, credits to Clyde) took the longest to reopen; take a look again at how Thomas and Wojciech did it in 2021. 
• Libya: The Libyan Civil War started in 2011, afterwards tourism hasn’t really returned although you can get in again since 2021, first on business visas and now on an erratic tourist visa process. All WHS are accessible, even the one in East Libya.
• North Korea: Group tours to its WHS were common until Covid hit (2020) and are expected to restart soon (though the border town that reopened in February 2025 unexpectedly closed again in March, according to Koryo Tours).
• Sudan: It has been on the US list since 2011, but its WHS have only been practically impossible to visit since the start of the Sudanese Civil War in 2023. It was a fairly mainstream destination before that (Photo 2 shows its excellent WHS of Meroë).
• Syria: The Civil War started in 2011; in 2015, “Iranian religious tourism was all that remained” (source). However, Damascus has always stayed open and in late 2016, many areas came back under central government control; 5 out of the 6 WHS have been visitable since, mostly on group tours, and, as mentioned above, in 2025, all can be done. 
• Yemen: The WHS of Socotra and Shibam are accessible and have been so for years. Sanaa and other inland sites have been off-limits since the Houthi takeover in 2014.

And at some notorious single WHS:

• Afghanistan, notably the Minaret of Jam: located in a Taliban hotbed and probably unvisited by outsiders between 2001 and 2021. 
• Democratic Republic of Congo, notably Virunga NP (Photo 3): The park is actually well-managed and has a good tourist infrastructure, but it lies in a highly flammable region with the presence of armed militia in and near the park, leading to frequent closures since its relaunch for tourism in 2014. 
• Mali, Tomb of Askia: The area around Gao has had security issues since at least 2012 (it was even sketchy before), but Tripadvisor reviews show that people still trickled in until 2019.  

A need to act immediately or FOMO?

What we can learn from these examples is that inaccessibility caused by armed conflict and security issues generally doesn’t last for more than 5-10 years. Wars will eventually end, and tourist facilities are often quickly restored to their former glory, as everybody loves hard currency. Individual WHS, though, may stay out of reach for 10-20 years.

So I consider these not as true “Windows of Opportunity” as they do not generally open for a short period only. They are more like cyclic events with rather unpredictable timelines. You can be sure to get several of those opportunities during a travel life, even for countries with a problematic history. You can look at the Ancient Villages of Northern Syria from the perspective of “they have been inaccessible for 14 years”, but they have been open for 36 years as well during the past 50 years. 50 of our community members managed to visit during those earlier years. 

Psychologically, the unpredictability of it all, the fear of “the window might close again on short notice”, pushes travellers into thinking these are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Hypes on social media strongly contribute to this FOMO. 

But keep in mind: When a country or region reopens after conflict, what will you encounter? Some people like to feel the optimism, witness history firsthand, or are lovers of Dark Tourism (seeing ruined cities, tanks left by the roadside, etc). But – especially keeping WHS in mind - how good will your visit be? The site may have been damaged during the war, may not have had its regular maintenance for years, site interpretation may have faded away, and the contents of the site museum are still packed away in boxes: it is probably not at its best. 

My take on this is that I plan my trips in the order of the most appealing to me first. If a site I am especially attracted to has an “open window”, I will try to use it (as I did with Virunga). But I'd rather wait for Sanaa and a full Yemen trip being possible than rush to Shibam. There’s no harm in waiting a couple of years or even for the next cycle: the visitor experience may be much better.

Do you immediately act upon perceived Travel Windows of Opportunity?

The 2025 WHC will probably bring us the inscription of number 31 on our Missing List: Carnac. Two other 2025 nominations, Neuschwanstein Castle and the Minoan Palaces, are even higher on that list, so it might become a good year. Carnac is on the Tentative List as ‘Megalithic Sites of Carnac’, but the nomination has been renamed ‘Carnac and Shores of the Morbihan megaliths’. It has been put forward as a Cultural landscape and comprises four components with thousands of standing stones and tombs. The TWHS has a 100% recommendation after 24 votes from our community.

Carnac is a representative of the European megalithic tradition since the Neolithic, which also includes the Megalithic Temples of Malta and multiple sites in the UK and Ireland, such as Stonehenge and Brú na Bóinne. While at other subjects we’ve now ended up at very niche Tier 3 sites, Carnac undoubtedly is at Tier 1 among its peers. The nominated area covers 19,598 ha, about 4x as large as Stonehenge/Avebury and 6x the sites in Malta. Its oldest parts significantly predate Stonehenge and overlap with the earliest timelines of Newgrange and Ħaġar Qim.

What took France so long to put this forward? Breton nationalists may claim it was subordination by “Paris”, but it just has been a long and careful process which has been described on the official nomination website. The story already starts in 1980, when Carnac was part of France’s first Tentative List (we had overlooked that; I’ve now updated the Site History accordingly). It stayed there until a revised list was submitted in 1984. It reappeared in 1996.

Along the way, things evolved:

1. Although the sites have been popular tourist and scientific destinations since the 19th century, it took until the 1990s for them to be properly managed and protected. The Table des Marchands (a major dolmen at Locmariaquer) was only excavated and restored in the early 1990s for example.
2. The scope changed from Carnac Alignments only in 1980 to multiple megalithic locations in the Morbihan area in the current proposal.
3. In 2005, major excavations brought to light connections between the elements. 
4. In 2011, an Association was created to streamline the nomination process.
5. Thanks to its size, many actors are involved so it is a slow process to keep them all on board. Some opposition from landowners has been reported in the past. 

I started my visit at the Carnac Alignments component. Winter is a good time to visit as you’re allowed on the trail amidst the stones by yourself and there will be much less visitors overall. Entrance to the Alignments is also free from October-March. I was lucky with the weather in early March: sunny, blue skies. I parked at the Ménec alignments and then continued on foot. Nothing can prepare you for the first sight of the endless rows of neatly arranged standing stones. I walked most of the ‘Alignments trail’ that connects Ménec with the other Alignments. You can also go by car as all have (smallish) car parks. 

The best part I found at the start of Kermario Alignment: it’s here that the standing stones get taller, a complete dolmen can be found (Photo 2) and you get the iconic views of the rolling hills covered with rows of stones. Unfortunately, late afternoon isn’t the best time of day for pictures from the viewing tower at the opposite end as it faces the sun. I also think that on-site interpretation could be more informative, although I understand that not much is known about the idea behind the Alignments. Here and there you still see markers left by people who oppose the fencing of the whole area.

Two days later, I went to the Locmariaquer component. As the crow flies, it lies only 8 km from the Alignments, though it is a bit further by road. The main part here is a cluster of three major monuments. A 7 EUR fee has to be paid to enter, but they let you watch a good video that provides a bit more context. The individual monuments (a 140m long tumulus, a dolmen and the grand fallen menhir) have information panels as well. The ruins of the Grand Menhir (Photo 3) – fallen and broken, possibly due to an earthquake - are the most impressive. Parts have been reused as spolia in the dolmen at the site, they have some simple carvings as well (plus a bit of historical graffiti, I think I read "Gazelle"?).

This is the first review of a visit to the Djerba WHS after its inscription. The site has received horrible reviews and an exceptionally low rating from our community, but I thought maybe it would all make more sense with the help of an OUV-frame. It’s about a dispersed but homogenous settlement and land-use pattern, characterized for example (but not limited to) self-sufficient rural communities with their own water supply, palm groves and tiny mosques. That’s why it includes 22 rather featureless and abandoned neighbourhood mosques.  

For my visit, I tried to make a representative pick from the locations without having to rent a car. In the morning, I visited 4 components in and north of the capital city Houmt Souk. The medina of Houmt Souk is not a rural settlement, of course, but the trade town where everything ended up. Included is just a small zone (the old funduqs, the covered market, the Mosque of the Turks and St. Joseph Church; but not Borj El Ghazi Mustapha). It feels like a smaller version of the Medina of Tunis, and even in the early morning, it is all geared up to receive the French and German beach tourists. I then walked on to another component, the Church of St. Nicholas. A sign on the door says that it only opens on Thursdays from 10-13. The sizeable church (photo 1) can only be seen from the sidewalk across the street.

My next goal was the Mosque of Sidi Smain (photo 2), located along the Houmt Souk Corniche. This is one of the fortified mosques that formed a defense system along the coast. It lies across the street from a much prettier newer mosque with the same name, but it's only this old one that is inscribed. The last one on my morning visit was the Mosque of Sidi Zekri. This is situated in what is locally known as the ‘Tourist Zone’, although it’s more surrounded by wasteland and half-finished apartment buildings. It’s an underground mosque of an interesting design, but you cannot enter.

In the afternoon, I went southward, first by taxi to Erriadh. Formerly known as Hara Seghira, this was a major Jewish neighbourhood. It’s now a small town that tempts to attract the selfie crowd by creating “Djerbahood”, streets full of murals (photo 3). I had no idea where to find former Jewish landmarks such as the yeshiva described in the nomination file.

I then walked on for 10 minutes to reach the El Gribah synagogue. I had read online that there’s an entrance fee and that you have to show your passport, but nothing was asked for. Your bag has to go through a security scanner, but that’s all. Tunisian military personnel guard the entrance road since the site has suffered from several terrorist attacks over the past decades. You can visit the synagogue interior freely (it’s open daily, except Saturday, in the morning and late afternoon) and take pictures. Next to it lies a courtyard with rooms for Jewish pilgrims.

The Verdict

I tried hard to understand and like it more than the previous visitors did, but despite my research and having all documentation available, I came back even more confused. There may be a hint of OUV here or there (the sheer survival of the El Ghriba synagogue, the distinctive defensive lines formed by its coastal mosques), but what really put me off was the lack of interpretation on site. It also fails on almost all of the WHS Commandments. Djerba feels like a kid that has received yet another present (World Heritage status that was apparently so urgent it required an AB overrule) and never even unpacked it 2 years later.

The official number of locations is also confusing: I think we have another (the 23rd!) example of “Incorrect UNESCO 'Number of locations'” here. The site was nominated as a serial site of 31 components: the nomination dossier, the maps, and the ICOMOS evaluation all have 31. However, the UNESCO website currently shows 30 components, and the 2024 SOC report by Tunisia had 32. A “Zone Côtière inhabitée” was added in the northwest, while Khazroun / Sedghiene / Guecheine are seen as one by UNESCO where they are separate elsewhere. I don’t see a decision about a boundary modification, so my best guess is that the original 31 locations are still valid.

Practicalities

• If you want to see a fair number of the 30+ components, you’d need to rent a car or charter a driver for half a day as the sites are so scattered around the island and some are really remote. I did my 6 components on foot and by taxi. There are local buses as well, but they don’t run often. Taxis on Djerba are a good bet since they are plentiful, routinely use the meter and are cheap (about 3 EUR for a 15-minute ride). Bikes can be rented as well (and even quads!), but as with hiking, the sun is fierce and the distances are just a bit too long.
• I stayed overnight in the old center of Houmt Souk, in a nicely renovated townhouse (Dar Lola) in the core zone. Houmt Souk is mostly alive during the day when the day-trippers from the beach resorts come and visit. In the evenings, many restaurants were closed. Maybe this was also caused by it being Ramadan: so they did not bother to open at all if they couldn’t serve lunch. Shops and supermarkets remained open during the day. 

While adding the plaque photos, I came across this pretty marker sent to me by Sebasfhb and found at the Wieliczka Salt Mine. It shows the first 12 sites inscribed on the World Heritage List, so it is essentially a plaque for all WHS of 1978. It prompted me to look closely at how these 12 came to be the first.

The nomination process in 1978

The World Heritage Committee (WHC) responsible for confirming the first list gathered in Washington DC, from 5-8 September 1978.  The text of the World Heritage Convention itself was drafted in 1972. In 1977 there had already been a first WHC meeting, where they decided on subjects like amendments to the draft text of the WH convention and a printed form to be filled in for a nomination, and where the wish was expressed that “the World Heritage List should be exclusive and ..drawn up with extreme care”. 

As was common in the first years, a Bureau Meeting preceded the WHC in June 1978. Here, a select group of 6 Members (Chair, Rapporteur, Vice-Chairs - together known as the "Bureau") reviewed the nominations received and the evaluations IUCN, ICCROM and ICOMOS presented. Their job was mainly to filter the nominations and to decide which ones would be brought to the table at the WHC in September. There was to be no substantive discussion on the individual sites during the WHC. The Bureau Members had little preparation as well: "some members of the Bureau had only received copies of the nominations that morning".

Sites that missed out

12 sites eventually got inscribed, but many more were proposed. Most were formally Re- or Deferred at the Bureau session for various reasons:

Auschwitz (Poland) fell victim to a hastily introduced new rule at the Bureau Meeting to only allow 2 nominations per year by a country. ICOMOS(!) chose the Wieliczka Salt Mine (the “most important”) and Krakow over Auschwitz. The latter got a Referral with a positive recommendation for 1979, when it indeed was inscribed. There was no word on the potential controversial status of this early “site of memory”.

Poland also “lost” Warsaw (needed further expert study to see if it met the criterion of authenticity) and Bialowieza (to await expert evaluation by the IUCN European Bison Committee) at that stage.

Regarding Djoudj (Senegal), additional information was requested about the possible dam construction “which would jeopardize site’s integrity”.

Lake Ichkeul (Tunisia) had a positive recommendation from the Bureau but was deferred eventually at the WHC, because requested additional information on water quality and assurances of continued supply had not come through. Also, for Zembra and Zembretta Islands National Park, there wasn't enough documentation for IUCN to perform a full evaluation. Two other nominations, Djebel Bou Hedma National Park and Djebel Chambi National Park, were withdrawn by Tunisia. The first one still lingers on its T List.

For Fasil Ghebbi, Gondar (Ethiopia), more information was needed. Eight other Ethiopian sites were deferred as well due to “inadequate documentation”. These were: Lower Valley of the Awash, Adulis, Tiya, Melka-Kontoure, Matara, Aksum, Yeha, Lower Valley of the Omo. It is remarkable to see that 75% of Ethiopia’s current WH List of 12 was already proposed so early. From the ones not inscribed later on, Adulis and Matara are now part of the country of Eritrea (and not on its T List), and Yeha has reappeared on Ethiopia’s T List in 2020.

Syria put in a request for funding for the sites of Damascus, Aleppo, Bosra and Palmyra, but did not submit nomination files. The 4 sites did get official IDs, though: 20, 21, 22 and 23, respectively. They kept those til the inscription years later (Aleppo only in 1986).

A closer look at the 12 that got inscribed

Ordered by official ID, which seems to have been handed out at the acceptance of the nomination dossier, the following sites were inscribed:

1 - Galapagos Islands (photo 3)
2 - Quito
3 - Aachen Cathedral
4 - L'Anse aux Meadows
9 - Simien National Park (photo 2)
18 - Lalibela
24 - Nahanni National Park
26 - Island of Gorée
27 - Mesa Verde
28 - Yellowstone
29 - Kraków
32 - Wieliczka Salt Mine

Some trivia:

• With an average rating of 4.08, according to our community, 1978 still represents the best year in WH history. 
• Iain Jackson was and still is the only member to have visited all 12 WHS of 1978. At 11, Gary Arndt, Roger Ourset (both missing Simien NP), Michael Novins, Atila Ege, and Roman Bruehwiler (all missing Nahanni) came close. 10 more lack visits to 2 WHS.
• Only 7 different countries had sites inscribed; 5 of them had two sites. 36 countries had ratified the WH Convention at the time.
• No site in Asia was recognized. Also, Iran was the only WHC member representing that continent at the meeting.

Last October, we started the inventory of WHS Plaques, with many community members posting their info at the dedicated forum topic since. I'd like to give a big thanks to all who have contributed. Especially to Clyde, who is the go-to guy to answer the question “Where’s the plaque?” since he has been fascinated with them for a long time. About 70% of the WHS now have at least one plaque registered. 

Findings from the first stage

A total of 1179 plaque locations have been put forward, spanning 851 sites.  Over 1100 pictures of plaques were shared.

• We found out that some plaques that had been photographed previously are no longer present on site. So there is a Plaque History as well. I’ve added those older ones to the repository as well (with a remark) since they may have had interesting designs.
• When No Plaque has been found on a site, this is also logged.
• Some sites have dozens of small plaques, one for each monument. Here, I tried to follow the logic of making separate entries only when they are at official separate components.
• As always, when you’re taking on big projects, there’s a bycatch as well: this was really the first time that I used the location names in overview lists. Some were outdated or unnecessarily long, like “Canterbury Cathedral Canterbury, Kent”. In those cases, I updated the location names as well.

Incorporating them into the website

The full plaque overview can be found on this revised page: WHS Plaque Collection. When you click on a thumbnail picture in the list, you’ll get a larger version to view the plaque in more detail. I think it is great to browse through them and:

• find the pretty ones (the Val di Noto series, the Kaiping Diaolou (photo 1 above) and Pitons of Réunion (photo 3 below)); 
• or the ones with errors or misspellings (look at Mazagan, the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi and Persepolis);
• or the ones in bad shape (such as the broken one at Awash) or still a work in progress (Gedeo, see photo 2);
• or the ones with interesting languages (the Tower of Hercules is in Latin, the Hoysala temple has writing in Kannada), or calendars (Koguryu Tombs displays the year of inscription in the Juche calendar). 

The page lists all plaques suggested so far, but adding all available photos is still a work in progress. Both Solivagant and Clyde gave me access to hundreds from their private collections.

Also, there’s a block on each site page that displays the applicable plaque(s). This is a temporary solution – maybe they would be better stored in an album, but we don’t have the functionality for that at the moment. 

Photo policy

For the plaque photos the same photo policy is applicable as elsewhere on this website:

• The copyright of the photos stays with the original owner. The photo credit is shown.
• Photos taken by community members are preferred over those from the public domain.

Also, I have

• Chosen the clearest picture if we have more than one, preferably with the plaque being the center, with a little bit of the setting (on a wall, a stone, etc) showing. No people present.
• Stored the photos in a reusable way (standard naming and in 3 sizes).
• Watermarked the large pictures to discourage theft of this unique collection.
• Not used external sources such as Shutterstock and Alamy (as the unpaid versions are covered in watermarks) and sources that don't allow deeplinks.

Things to do and how you can help

We’re not done yet! I will be adding the remaining photos that have already been delivered or suggested. There are still hundreds to go, so that will take me several weeks.

Where you can help is that we need plaque locations (and plaque photos) for the 372 missing WHS. I’ve put a list, ordered by country, of the missing ones on the Plaque Topic on the Forum. You can add the specifics there and/or send them by e-mail to els@worldheritagesite.org. Brazil, China, Germany, Indonesia, Iran, Kenya, Peru, Russia, South Africa, and Vietnam are countries that are especially underrepresented at the moment.

And if you have any photos of your own that could replace those now marked as coming from an “external source”, I’d also be grateful.

When I wrote about the TWHS Masters three weeks ago, I was surprised to find that people who visited all or almost all countries were missing out on also having visited (T)WHS in those countries. A drop of 30-40 is not uncommon. I decided to have a closer look at which countries are the hardest to visit a WHS in, and why the WHS in those countries may have stayed unvisited.

None of the WHS visited

At the moment, 168 states have at least one WHS. The best scorer (Shihe Huang) among the community members has visited WHS in 154 countries. So he misses 14, and the others at the top of the rankings even lack up to 35 countries. 

So which countries do they miss? Looking at the Top 16 members displayed in the rankings, together they have 94 different countries where they are missing a visit. The 10 Most Difficult are:

A few other countries just outside the Top 10 are notable as well, as they have more than 3 WHS to choose from but are rarely covered: Burkina Faso (4), Cote d’Ivoire (5), DRC (5), and Tajikistan (4). You can find the full list here.

General factors that come into play

Not visited the country at all

Obviously, if you haven’t visited a country, you won’t have visited any WHS in it either. This isn’t a big factor among this group of well-travelled members though: 6 of the 16 have visited all 193 countries and 7 others have 138+ (mostly in the 150s). For the remaining 3 I couldn’t find any public sources for their UN count.

Open or closed to tourists, dangerous or not, difficult and expensive visas: the people at the top of these rankings have travelled for so many years that such complicating factors have little impact. Only 4 miss out on Yemen for example.

Only WHS in their country

30 countries have only one WHS, and all of them (except for the city-state WHS Luxembourg and San Marino) figure on the ‘Most Difficult’ longlist of 94. Some people are even stumbling on the Singapore Botanic Gardens, Santo Domingo or Bridgetown. Six of the ten most difficult countries have only one WHS. So 'having only one WHS' seems to be a major defining factor.

The Inheritance Effect

There’s an administrative factor as well: if you have ticked one component of a serial transnational or transboundary site, you will “automatically” get a tick for the other countries involved, even when you may have never set foot there. So if you have visited Sangha in C.A.R., you will also get Cameroon and the Republic of Congo! Moldova is also a notorious example, as a visit to any Struve site will give you a Moldova tick as well. Unfortunately, due to the way we register visits on this website, I cannot differentiate between them. 

But I don’t think this is a major factor: most transnational and transboundary sites are located in countries that are well-covered anyway (Europe, North America). Only Qhapaq Nan will get you a big bonus (6 countries), and if you have made it in time to the W-Arly-Pendjari Complex it will give you 3 fairly difficult countries in return (Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso).

Country specific factors

When we zoom in on the individual countries, the following observations can be made:

Single and remote, costly, specialist WHS

Remote island WHS are always hard, as they are costly and also require a specific interest in marine activities.

• Marshall Islands: people often 'tick' the country via the Island Hopper Flights that will land you on Majuro Atoll. But its only WHS is Bikini Atoll, 3 days further away by a chartered ship. Only 2 people from the whole community claim to have visited it.
• Kiribati has a similar pattern: its Phoenix Islands require a private or chartered vessel. 3 people within the whole community have visited; all are part of the Top 16.
• And Solomon Islands to a lesser extent as well: its main airport at Honiara is better connected to the outside world, but East Rennell requires an onward domestic flight that goes twice a week and then "a car ride more expensive than the flight". 3 members have visited, 2 of them are within the Top 16 of this survey.

Odd, single WHS 

Although a country’s first WHS often is its major tourist site or a place in or near the capital, a few countries have made odd choices:

• The low ranking of Angola I think is due to three factors: it was a hard country to visit because of visas etc for a long time, its only WHS Mbanza Kongo is quite out of the way, ánd Mbanza Kongo is a relatively recently added WHS so it usually takes a while for visitors to catch up. 
• There are several valid reasons to visit Papua New Guinea, but Kuk? It lies close to Mt. Hagen though, so it is accessible, but most people wouldn’t bother as it seems so unappealing. 
• Guinea has only one WHS, Mount Nimba, far from the capital and without a tourist infrastructure. It even is a transboundary WHS, shared with Cote d’Ivoire, but few people will have visited that side either.

Not wanting to pay up for Central Africa

The following Central African countries all have more than one WHS, but still are in the top 10 least visited countries. You can’t get away with covering capital cities only here.

• Chad: two good WHS, but they take time, money and stamina to reach. Maybe the heat, the wild camping and the need for an agency also deters people.
• Cameroon: easy country but its two WHS both require (expensive) specialist agencies to get into and are not so popular that sharing is an option.
• Central African Republic: realistically only one of its two WHS is reachable, but again: time, money and stamina are needed.
• Republic of Congo: both its fine WHS are accessible on specialist tours.

My conclusion is that the main factors why some countries aren't covered well are: (a) having only 1 WHS, plus (b) the cost versus perceived benefits of reaching that WHS if it lies out of the way. People who don't like marine sites aren't going to pay for a 10k+ EUR chartered voyage to a remote island, and neither do people who dislike the desert go all the way in Chad. 

Cidade Velha is an easy, short excursion from Santiago’s (and Cabo Verde’s) capital Praia. A bay, a few cobbled streets, remains of Portuguese fortifications and churches – you know what it looks like even before you have seen it. I tried a different approach for my visit and went for a guided hike through the Ribeira Grande Valley. This way I also ticked one of the other activity boxes I had for Cabo Verde: “Do a hike in the countryside” (as the archipelago is known as a hiker's paradise).

When you look at the official map of Cidade Velha WHS, you’ll notice that not only the seaside town is included but also a much larger area inland. The boundaries of the core zone follow the canyon that was carved out by the river Ribeira Grande. This area is linked to a specific part of the site’s OUV: the “acclimatisation and dissemination of numerous plant species between the temperate and tropical zones”. The Portuguese colonists experimented with various crops here in the 16th and 17th centuries, starting unsuccessfully with cereals but later finding out that plants from Africa’s mainland (coconut) and Latin America (maize) did well.

We started our hike in the village of Calabaceira. From there, a marked trail leads down into the valley. The guided hike is labelled as “an easy and accessible path for every hiker” by the tour company, but the volcanic soil is rocky all the time and especially going down you have to stay concentrated so as not to slip. 

Already at the start, we saw a troop of Green monkeys (mammal migrants from West Africa); the guide said that they always run away to a higher spot on the cliffs when they see humans on the path – and that is what they did when we passed as well. The views here at the beginning of the trail are stunning as you look into the evergreen valley with a great variation of trees. This is in stark contrast to the rest of the island, which is pretty barren in the dry months of winter. There’s a natural spring here that provides water all year for irrigation.

Halfway down the ridge, we came across the first farms. Nowadays most farmers live in Praia and only come during the season to work the land (and return home in the evening). There’s a good variation in crops: two kinds of bananas, mangoes, papaya, tamarind, figs, and berries. The most popular plant however seems to be sugarcane, as it forms the main ingredient of the highly alcoholic drink grogue. 

In the valley, we followed the dry river bed (flat, but still a lot of stones!). Here we stopped at a single huge baobab, said to be over 400 years old. Cabo Verde’s baobabs are linked to the visit of Charles Darwin to the island in 1873: his first real “taste” of tropical vegetation, and the longevity of baobabs got him thinking about the age of the earth. The specimen he saw apparently is no longer there, but this one must have been mature at the time and quite a sight as well. Like Darwin, we also saw several Grey-headed kingfishers – it’s funny to encounter a species of this globally common bird family not near water, but behaving the same as always: sit still on a branch and wait until an insect crawls by.

After 4km of walking, which took us 2 hours, we arrived on the outskirts of the town of Cidade Velha. We found a simple distillery squeezing the juice out of the sugarcane to prepare it for being turned into grogue. Sugarcane stalks also comprise the traditional material for the roofs of houses, as can be seen in the old street Rua da Banana. 

My recent trip to all 10 WHS of Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia was a mix of 3 styles: a Group Tour for Mauritania, independent travel in North Senegal and a Private Tour for Gambia and East Senegal. I do not regret these choices. The downsides of organized travel were mitigated by not having to endure them for a long time. Let’s look at what Tours to WHS can bring you.

Pros and cons of tours

1.      Convenience versus lack of first-hand experience

Although I always first try to cover places individually, sometimes the infrastructure just isn’t there (or very complicated/expensive) to do it on your own. Desert trips like Mauritania and Chad require 4WD driving skills and travelling in a convoy. Manu NP requires a boat and camping in the jungle. Without a tour, you would not even get there. 

The downside is that when I don’t organize it all myself, I feel less prepared and the memories don’t stay with me as long.

2.      Local perspective versus cost of adding a guide

A good guide can be your key to unlocking the country, adding local perspective without the guide having to be a scholar on the Almohad Caliphate or Saloum Delta ecology.

But it is always a gamble whether they deliver on this. A minimum tour leader standard (good English, decent communication and organization skills – qualities you will only start to appreciate when they are absent) is usually aimed for, but most cannot go beyond that level. This is especially true in countries with few tourists, the only kind of countries you take a tour for anyway. Photo 1 shows our Mauritanian guide dancing - an activity both we and he could have done without.

Often you are better off hiring a driver with good language skills. 

3.      Seeing all points of interest versus missing the point

Tours often are all-day affairs, to keep you busy for 12 hours or so. They follow a set itinerary and often use minor, ‘filler’ attractions in the area to offer their guests a varied menu as they cater to an audience of different interests. 

When I travel individually, I make the WHS the center of the day. I spend there as much time as needed. Often I don’t go anywhere else on that day. But I’ve been on tours where I have sat all day waiting for a WHS visit to happen after a kitschy modern palace, a village visit and a belated lunch, reaching the WHS just in time before sunset (I am describing my Moenjodaro visit, during the Pakistan-tour-from-hell). 

So go for a private tour if you can afford it – this way you can make sure, both beforehand and on the day itself, that your interests are prioritized.

Best guided site tours

A special kind of tour is the ‘guided site visit’: sometimes obligatory (you have to join a group to shuffle with 30 others through a palace), but at other times a more in-depth visit of multiple hours up til a day with a knowledgeable guide in a private or small group setting. 

If I can find a good one of the latter, I am always prepared to pay for a tour to enhance my WH site visit. I scanned my reviews of visits to WHS for the ones I remember most fondly, and these came out best:

• Xochimilco (private tour): a very relaxed day tour centered around the produce of the floating gardens (photo above), an essential part of the Mexico City WHS. We visited farmers, ate with them, looked at their produce in the field and at the market. A peek into a lifestyle I could never have organized myself.
• Lake Baikal (private tour): a full day in Baikalsky Nature Reserve, taking in the views, hiking through a Siberian pine forest and observing the ringing of birds (not an activity I would have chosen myself considering my slight ornithophobia, but it was enlightening).
• Matobo Hills (small group tour): seeing varied aspects of this hard-to-grasp site, including a wild chase of a baby rhino with the unforgettable Andy.
• Both Brazilian Atlantic Forest sites, South East and Discovery Coast (private tour): exploring them in the company of passionate Brazilian guides (the best company overall you can have; the photo below was taken in Guarau) who were well-educated ecologists.

Other good bets are sites where there isn’t much to see above ground such as Fort Ancient (Hopewell), where I got a deep dive into the subject on a tour conducted by the Site Manager talking about the complex history of this specific site, or Vredefort Dome.

Do you have any memorable guided day tours to (T)WHS that improved the experience?