From the World Heritage inscription for Great Smoky Mountains National Park: The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a major North American refuge of temperate zone flora and fauna that survived the Pleistocene glaciations. The park includes the largest remnant of the diverse Arcto-Tertiary geoflora era left in the world and provides an indication of …
From the World Heritage inscription for Mammoth Cave National Park: Mammoth Cave is the most extensive cave system in the world, with over 285 miles (456 km) of surveyed cave passageways within the property (and at least another 80 miles [128 km] outside the property). The park illustrates a number of stages of the Earth’s …
The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site World Heritage inscription : Cahokia Mounds is the largest and earliest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico. It was occupied primarily during the Mississippian period (800–1350) when it covered over 1,600 hectares (3,950 acres) and included some 120 mounds. It is the pre-eminent example of a cultural, religious, and economic …
From the World Heritage inscription for La Lonja de la Seda de Valencia: Built between 1482 and 1533, this group of buildings was originally used for trading in silk (hence its name, the Silk Exchange) and it has always been a center for commerce. It is a masterpiece of late Gothic architecture. The grandiose Sala …
From the Palmeral of Elche World Heritage inscription for the Palmeral of Elche: The Palmeral of Elche, a landscape of groves of date palms, was formally laid out, with elaborate irrigation systems, at the time the Muslim city of Elche was erected, towards the end of the tenth century A.C., when much of the Iberian …
From the World Heritage inscription for the Vizcaya Bridge: Vizcaya Bridge straddles the mouth of the Ibaizabal estuary, west of Bilbao. It was designed by the Basque architect Alberto de Palacio and completed in 1893. The 45-m-high bridge with its span of 160 m, merges 19th-century ironworking traditions with the then-new lightweight technology of twisted …
Antoni Gaudí is almost synonymous with Barcelona. The architect was a visionary with an outsized impact on the architecture and building technology of the early 20th century. La Sagrada Familia is Gaudí’s signature building in Barcelona, and it’s been under construction for almost 130 years. Despite the size and scope of this basilica, it’s not …
From the World Heritage inscription for the Palau de la Música Catalana and Hospital de Sant Pau, Barcelona: These are two of the finest contributions to Barcelona’s architecture by the Catalan art nouveau architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner. The Palau de la Música Catalana is an exuberant steel-framed structure full of light and space and …
From the World Heritage inscription for Monticello and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), author of the American Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States, was also a talented architect of neoclassical buildings. He designed Monticello (1769–1809), his plantation home, and his ideal ‘academical village’ (1817–26), which is still …