What is a World Heritage Site?

Watch: What is World Heritage Site? at

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 WORLD HERITAGE SITES
 is a cultural or natural landmark that has been
recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
 these sites are deemed worthy of preservation due to
their universal value to humanity, both in the present
and for future generations.
 each World Heritage Site is held in collective trust,
'belonging to all the peoples of the world, irrespective
of the territory on which they are located', and is legally
protected by international treaty.
- Fiona McKendrick (University of Oxford)

Watch: Our World Heritage – UNESCO’s Heritage Convention at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UliQx9_3rw8
Heritage worth protecting

 The protection of ‘World Heritage’ by international

convention was preceded by the safeguarding campaigns
of Abu Simbel (Egypt), the Borobodur Temple Compounds
(Indonesia), and Venice and its Lagoon (Italy) in the 1960s.

 The vulnerability of these sites to threats like pillaging,

erosion, and construction, coupled with the power and
success of international campaigns for their preservation,
led to a convention to protect ‘common cultural heritage of
humanity.’
Recognizing world Heritage
 According to the 1972 Convention
Concerning the Protection of the World
Cultural and Natural Heritage, a site must
possess ‘outstanding universal value’ and
meet at least one of the ten Cultural and
Natural criteria.
 There are 3 types of sites: (1) natural,
(2) cultural, and (3) mixed
- Encyclopaedia Britannica
 Cultural heritage sites include hundreds of historic
buildings and town sites, important archaeological
sites, and works of monumental sculpture or painting
. 
 Natural heritage sites are restricted to those
natural areas that:
(1) furnish outstanding examples of Earth’s
 record of life or its geologic processes, (2)
provide excellent examples of ongoing
ecological and biological evolutionary processes,
(3) contain natural phenomena that are rare,
unique, superlative, or of outstanding beauty, or
(4) furnish habitats for rare or endangered
animals or plants or are sites of exceptional
biodiversity.
Watch: Wordld Heritage explained - animated short about UNESCO World
Heritage Convention at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOzxUVCCSug .
 However, there is an over-representation of 
European and religious, in particular Judeo-
Christian, sites.
 In 1994, the World Heritage Committee launched
the Global Strategy for a Representative, Balanced
and Credible World Heritage List, promoting a list
reflective of the world’s cultural and natural
diversity. This involved the recognition that
‘Cultural heritage does not end at monuments and
collections of objects’ and the 2003 Convention for
the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural
Heritage.
 The UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists
include oral traditions, traditional craft production,
performing arts, and rituals (e.g. Tsiattista poetic
duelling in Cyprus)
Origins of the World Heritage Convention
 The primary impetus for the adoption of the World
Heritage Convention was the construction of the 
Aswan High Dam.
 In 1959 the governments of the 
United Arab Republic (U.A.R.; now Egypt and Syria)
and Sudan turned to UNESCO for help in salvaging
the ancient sites and monuments of Egyptian Nubia.
The sites were threatened with destruction by the 
great lake which would build up behind the new dam
at Aswān. UNESCO responded with an appeal to the
international community for assistance, and the
result was the largest archaeological rescue
operation in history (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
The Nubian preservation campaign
 Aerial archaeological surveys were carried out by UNESCO
in collaboration with the governments of the U.A.R. and
Sudan in 1960.
 The UNESCO mission in Sudan, while assisting the national
expeditions in providing survey data and a photographic
laboratory at Wādī Ḥalfā, made ground surveys of the many
islands of the Second Cataract and of sections of the east
and west banks of the Nile River.
 In addition, the mission recorded and excavated a
considerable number of sites. An Old Kingdom town was
discovered at Buhen, providing evidence of a much earlier
Egyptian penetration of Kush than was previously believed.
The town was preserved and relocated.
• While these efforts represented a remarkable
international undertaking, the preservation and relocation
of the temples of Nubia posed a challenge of a much
greater magnitude. UNESCO’s Executive Committee of the
International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia
undertook a massive fund-raising effort, and so generous
was the world’s response that virtually all the significant
temples and shrines of Nubia were preserved.
• The salvaging of the two rock-cut temples, of Ramses II
 and Queen Nefertari, at Abu Simbel, posed
unprecedented problems. The plan—to remove the
overlying sandstone, dissect the temples in the interior of
the cliff, and reassemble them on a prepared site on the 
plateau above—was successfully carried out by late 1967.
• Fifteen other temples were salvaged in Egyptian
Nubia, including the large Egypto-Roman temple of
Kalabsha, which now stands some 30 miles (50 km)
from the place of its foundation. All three 18th-dynasty
temples of Sudanese Nubia—Semna East, Semna West,
and Buhen—were re-erected on the grounds of the
new archaeological museum in Khartoum.
• The removal of Hatshepsut’s temple at Buhen
exposed, for the first time in 3,500 years, the
foundations of the original Middle Kingdom temple
beneath. A group of Ptolemaic-Roman temples on the
island of Philae, downstream of the high dam, were
relocated to the nearby island of Agilkia in the 1970s.
Sites at Risk
 Unfortunately, World Heritage designation
does not ensure a site’s safety; all six UNESCO
monuments in Syria were destroyed or
damaged during the current civil war,
including the Palmyra Arch of Triumph and the
Great Mosque of Aleppo.
 The World Heritage List, through its
associations with the United Nations and the
concept of collective heritage, is at once
political and global.
Palmyra Arch of Triumph

Great Mosque of Aleppo

Our World Heritage
 World Heritage Sites remind us of the potency of
monuments and landscapes at local, national and
global scales. They speak to the accomplishments of
cultures past and present, and of their diversity,
innovation, social relations, values and beliefs.
 Natural sites often hold exceptional beauty, as
well as discovery and variation in geology and
biology. Both cultural and natural heritage sites are
held in trust, due to their meaning and value to
present and future humanity, with the belief that
they also hold untapped potential for discovery,
teaching, engagement.
 References
Encyclopaedia Britannica (n.d.). World Heritage site. Retrieved
from
https://www.britannica.com/topic/World-Heritage-site.

McKendrick, F. (n.d.). What is World Heritage Site? Retrieved

from
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/what-is-a-wor
ld-heritage-site
.