Unesco is adding more sites to its World Heritage List. Here are seven

The United Nations World Heritage Committee is meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to contemplate, among other things, additions to its list of World Heritage Sites, places on Earth considered to be of outstanding universal value to humanity. 

While there are 1,157 sites across 167 countries — 900 cultural, 218 natural and 39 mixed properties — this year's 45th session of the World Heritage Committee, taking place from September 10 to 25, has another 50 sites to consider for inclusion. Thirty-two have been added so far, which you can read more about here. 

Below we highlight seven, all worthwhile contenders for inclusion on the adventurous heritage-lover's bucket list.

1) Bale Mountains National Park, Ethiopia 

Located 400km southeast of the capital Addis Ababa, Bale Mountains National Park has some spectacularly diverse landscapes, including volcanic peaks and ridges, dramatic escarpments, sweeping valleys, glacial lakes, lush forests, deep gorges and numerous waterfalls.

Its Sanetti Plateau rises to more than 4,000m and includes the highest peak in the southern Ethiopia highlands as well as numerous glacial lakes and swamps. The southern slopes are covered by the lush and largely unexplored Harenna Forest.

Unesco calls it “mosaic of extraordinary beauty” and adds: “The property harbours diverse and unique biodiversity at ecosystem, species and genetic levels, and five major rivers originate within the park, estimated to supply water and support the livelihoods of millions of people in and beyond Ethiopia.”

2) Kaunas, Lithuania 

Kaunas is Lithuania's second city, which was the country's provisional capital between the world wars. From 1919 to 1939, it transitioned in a short period of time from a fortress town of the Russian Empire to a modern, elegant European capital with numerous examples of early Modernist architecture, often referred to as “the architecture of optimism”.

As Visit Kaunas explains, “The dense concentration of modernist buildings in the city ... is a unique phenomenon across Europe, reflecting various contemporary style trends ... Most of these buildings have not been destroyed during the war and have survived to this day.”

Its inclusion makes it the only European city on the World Heritage List that represents the large-scale urbanisation of the interwar period and its diverse modernist architecture.

3) The Gaya Tumuli, South Korea

The Gaya Tumuli are seven burial mounds built by the Gaya Confederacy, a group of small states that existed in shifting configurations through the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula from the 1st until the mid-6th century. 

All state-designated cultural properties, they are located in the provinces of Gyeongsang and North Jeolla.

In the bid to have them added to the list, South Korean officials said the Gaya Tumuli not only represent archaeological evidence of the Gaya culture with its distinct political system, but also show the diversity among ancient East Asian civilisations.

The committee agreed, saying that “through their geographical distribution and landscape characteristics, types of burials, and grave goods, the cemeteries attest to the distinctive Gaya political system in which polities existed as autonomous political equals while sharing cultural commonalities”.

4) Zatec and the landscape of Saaz Hops, Czech Republic

Žatec is a town in the Czech Republic on the Ohře River. It is famous for a more than-700-year-long tradition of growing Saaz, “the world’s most renowned hop variety”, which is used by breweries around the globe.

The Unesco area includes hop fields near the river that have been farmed continuously for hundreds of years, as well as historic villages and buildings used for processing hops and the well-preserved medieval town centre.

Unesco says: “Together, these illustrate the evolution of the agro-industrial processes and socioeconomic system of growing, drying, certifying and trading hops from the Late Middle Ages to the present.”

5) Deer stones, Mongolia 

Deer stones are ancient megaliths carved with symbols — the name comes from their frequent depictions of flying deer.

Dating from about 1200 to 600 BCE, they are found on the slopes of the Khangai Ridge in central Mongolia and were used for ceremonial and funerary practices. Up to 4m tall, they are set directly in the ground as single-standing stones or in groups, and are almost always located in complexes that include large burial mounds called khirgisüürs and sacrificial altars.

Unesco calls them “the most important surviving structures belonging to the culture of Eurasian Bronze Age nomads that evolved and then slowly disappeared between the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE”.

6) Andrefana Dry Forests, Madagascar 

The Dry Forests of Andrefana are an extension of Madagascar's Tsingy de Bemaraha Strict Nature Reserve, which was inscribed in 1990. They represent a tropical dry forest eco-region situated in the western and northern part of the island.

Their climate is characterised by a four- to seven-month dry season, sufficiently harsh that many species of trees, vines, and herbs are deciduous for two to six months. The rainy season, during which one to three metres of rain can fall, is as wet, if not wetter, than a rainforest.

They are among the world's richest and most distinctive dry forests with high numbers of endemic plant and animal species, but are under severe threat from grazing, logging and other human activities.

Says Unesco: “These additional sites are of extreme importance for conservation as they cover a spectacular array of endemic and threatened biodiversity, including baobabs, flame trees (Delonix), as well as unique evolutionary lineages such as the Mesitornithiformes, an order of birds which is 54 million years old.” 

7) Djerba, Tunisia

Djerba is an island off the coast of Tunisia in the Mediterranean Sea, known for its whitewashed beaches and desert towns influenced by Berber, Arab, Jewish and African cultures. It is popular with tourists for its ancient ruins, whitewashed villages, mosques, churches and synagogues, but Unesco highlights its value in terms of settlement patterns that developed on the island around the 9th century CE amid the semi-dry and water-scarce environment.

Unesco explains: “Low‑density was its key characteristic: it involved the division of the island into neighbourhoods, clustered together, that were economically self-sustainable, connected to each other and to the religious and trading places of the island, through a complex network of roads.

“Resulting from a mixture of environmental, sociocultural and economic factors, the distinctive human settlement of Djerba demonstrates the way local people adapted their lifestyle to the conditions of their water-scarce natural environment.”