UNESCO announces 4 new World Heritage Sites

Four new sites made it to the World Heritage list of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The Nalanda site comprises the archaeological remains of a monastic and scholastic institution dating from the 3rd century B.C.to the 13th century A.D.

UNESCO will consider 18 more nominations to be added to the World Heritage List before its session ends on July 20.

The site of Ani, which lies outside the Turkish city of Kars, was the capital of an Armenian kingdom around the end of the first millenium, before its conquest in 1064 by Seljuk forces hastened a decline then completed by the Mongol conquest and an natural disaster.

UNESCO said Ani presents a “comprehensive overview of the evolution of medieval architecture through examples of nearly all the different architectural innovations of the region between the 7th and 13th centuries”.

Other additions to the UNESCO list from around the world include Nan Madol in Micronesia, the Persian qanats in Iran and the Zuojiang Huashan’s rock art landscape in China.You might want to book those tickets before the tourists arrive.

The Gorham’s Cave Complex on Gibraltar meanwhile “provide evidence of Neanderthal occupation over a span of more than 125,000 years”, including abstract rock engravings, it added.

Throughout the arid regions of Iran, agricultural and permanent settlements are supported by the ancient qanat system of tapping alluvial aquifers at the heads of valleys and conducting the water along underground tunnels by gravity, often over many kilometers.

A serial property combining 30 sites located in Bosnia and Herzegovina, western Serbia, western Montenegro and central and southern Croatia representing cemetries and medieval tombstones or stecci were also inscribed by the World Heritage Committee to the list.

All five of Libya’s World Heritage sites were named on Thursday by the agency as at risk of damage from the civil war that continues to rage in the country.

The List of World Heritage in Danger is created to inform the worldwide community of conditions threatening the very characteristics for which properties were inscribed on the World Heritage List and rally the support of the global community for their protection.