Sceilg Mhichíl

Sceilg Mhichíl UNESCO World Heritage Site, Ireland

From the Skellig Michael World Heritage inscription: Skellig Michael is an outstanding, and in many respects unique, example of an early religious settlement deliberately sited on a pyramidal rock in the ocean, preserved because of a remarkable environment. It illustrates, as no other site can, the extremes of a Christian monasticism characterizing much of North …

Read more

Australian Fossil Mammal Sites

Australian Fossil Mammal Sites - UNESCO World Heritage Site

From the Australian Fossil Mammal Sites: World Heritage inscription: Australia is regarded as the most biologically distinctive continent in the world, an outcome of its almost total isolation for 35 million years following separation from Antarctica. Only two of its seven orders of singularly distinctive marsupial mammals have ever been recorded elsewhere. Two of the …

Read more

Maloti-Drakensberg Park

Maloti-Drakensberg Park UNESCO World Heritage Site, South Africa

From the World Heritage inscription: The Maloti-Drakensberg Park is a transboundary site composed of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg National Park in South Africa and the Sehlathebe National Park in Lesotho. The site has exceptional natural beauty in its soaring basaltic buttresses, incisive dramatic cutbacks, and golden sandstone ramparts as well as visually spectacular sculptured arches, caves, …

Read more

Robben Island

Robben Island UNESCO World Heritage Site, South Africa

From the World Heritage inscription: Robben Island was used at various times between the 17th century and the 20th century as a prison, a hospital for socially unacceptable groups, and a military base. Its buildings, and in particular those of the late 20th-century maximum security prison for political prisoners, testify to the way in which …

Read more

Medina of Marrakesh

Medina of Marrakesh UNESCO World Heritage Site

From the World Heritage inscription: The capital of the Almoravids and the Almohads played a decisive role in the development of medieval planning. Marrakesh (which gave its name to the Moroccan Empire) is the textbook example of a large Islamic capital in the Western world. With its maze of narrow streets, houses, souks (markets), traditional …

Read more

Historic Town of St George and Related Fortifications, Bermuda

Historic Town of St George and Related Fortifications, Bermuda

From the World Heritage inscription: The historic town of St George with its related fortifications is an outstanding example of a continuously occupied, fortified, colonial town dating from the early 17th century and the oldest English town in the New World.St George is a picturesque and outstanding example of the earliest colonial English urban settlement …

Read more

Nahanni National Park, Northwest Territories

Nahanni National Park, Northwest Territories

From the World Heritage inscription for Nahanni National Park: Located in the southwest corner of Northwest Territories along the course of the South Nahanni and Flat rivers, the park lies in a diverse mountainous area comprising mountain ranges, rolling hills, elevated plateaus, deep canyons and huge waterfalls, as well as a unique limestone cave system. …

Read more

Choirokoitia

Choirokoitia UNESCO World Heritage Site, Cyprus

From the World Heritage inscription: Located in the District of Larnaka, about 6 km from the southern coast of Cyprus, the Neolithic settlement of Choirokoitia lies on the slopes of a hill partly enclosed in a loop of the Maroni River. Occupied from the 7th to the 5th millennium B.C., the village covers an area …

Read more

Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum

?al Saflieni Hypogeum UNESCO World Heritage SIte

From the World Heritage inscription: ?al Saflieni Hypogeum is a cultural property of exceptional prehistoric value. This unique monument dates back to early antiquity (about 2500 BC) and it is the only known example of a subterranean structure of the Bronze Age. The hypogeum was discovered accidentally in 1902 by a stonemason who was laying …

Read more