Unesco adds these 33 cultural, natural sites to World Heritage List this year

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) has inscribed 33 new cultural and natural sites to its World Heritage List so far.

A prehistoric solar observatory in Peru, an ancient Harappa city in India, and a railway connecting the Caspian Sea with the Persian Gulf were among the sites added to the list during the extended 44th session of Unesco’s World Heritage Committee.

The committee didn’t meet last year owing to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, so they are reviewing the nominations for both 2020 and 2021. Unesco has listed ten selection criteria of which sites must meet at least one of them to be included on the World Heritage List.

The UN cultural agency says the sites must be of “outstanding universal value” and meet at least one of the ten criteria to be included in the World Heritage List. The criteria include representing a “master of human creative genius”, and bearing a “unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared” among others.

In 2021, the committee inscribed 33 properties on the coveted list which includes 28 cultural and 5 natural sites.

Here’s the list of the newest World Heritage Sites:

Arslantepe Mound (Turkey)

Chankillo Archaeoastronomical Complex (Peru):

Colonies of Benevolence (Belgium/Netherlands)

The Great Spa Towns of Europe (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)

Cordouan Lighthouse (France)

Nice, Winter Resort Town of the Riviera (France)

Dholavira: a Harappan City (India)

Kakatiya Rudreshwara (Ramappa) Temple, Telangana (India)

Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt (Germany)

ShUM Sites of Speyer, Worms and Mainz (Germany)

Frontiers of the Roman Empire — The Lower German Limes (Germany/the Netherlands)

Padua’s fourteenth-century fresco cycles (Italy)

The Porticoes of Bologna (Italy)

Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, a landscape of Arts and Sciences (Spain)

Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan China (China)

Roșia Montană Mining Landscape (Romania)

Sítio Roberto Burle Marx (Brazil)

The work of engineer Eladio Dieste: Church of Atlántida (Uruguay)

Trans-Iranian Railway (Iran)

Cultural Landscape of Hawraman/Uramanat (Iran)

Ḥimā Cultural Area (Saudi Arabia)

Amami-Oshima Island, Tokunoshima Island, Northern part of Okinawa Island, and Iriomote Island (Japan)

Jomon Prehistoric Sites in Northern Japan (Japan)

Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands (Georgia)

Getbol, Korean Tidal Flats (South Korea)

Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex (Thailand)

As-Salt – The Place of Tolerance and Urban Hospitality (Jordan)

Settlement and Artificial Mummification of the Chinchorro Culture in the Arica and Parinacota Region (Chile)

Sudanese style mosques in northern Côte d’Ivoire (Côte d’Ivoire)

The works of Jože Plečnik in Ljubljana – Human Centred Urban Design (Slovenia)

The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales (United Kingdom)

Petroglyphs of Lake Onega and the White Sea (Russia)

Ivindo National Park (Gabon)