UNESCO Sites
Last week, I was in the town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so I thought it would be a good time to make a list of UNESCO sites that I've been to, and others that I would like to visit.
I have a book called World Heritage Sites (6th Ed.); they can also be found listed here in an interactive map (a .kml file can even be downloaded to explore in Google Earth). The 6th edition of the book only goes up to 2014. New additions are listed here by year.
To start off, here is a list of UNESCO sites that I've seen. It includes links to the official page for each site, which contains a description and photo gallery. If I've written a blog post myself that includes pictures or a description, I've also linked to it.
- Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland.
- Old Town Lunenburg.
- Historic district of Old Québec – relevant post.
- Rideau Canal – it's been a while since I've spent time in Ottawa and I'd like to go back relatively soon.
- Statue of Liberty – I haven't been to the island that it's on, but I've had some nice views of it while taking off or landing at Newark and Laguardia airports.
- Independence Hall in Philadelphia – I didn't go inside, but spent part of an afternoon in the surrounding park.
- Olympic National Park – relevant post.
- Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks.
- Heart of Neolithic Orkney – a cool (in both senses!) island off the north coast of Scotland.
- Edinburgh old and new towns – relevant post.
- Banks of the Seine in Paris – relevant post.
- Historic Lyon – relevant post.
- Terroirs of Burgundy – relevant post. When I was in France, I went on a drive from Dijon to Beaune to see this part of the countryside. This site was recently added (in 2015) and isn't in my book.
- Canal du Midi – relevant post.
- Al-Hambra castle/palace in Grenada, Spain – relevant post
This list represents a bit over 1% of the total number of UNESCO sites. There are a similar number of other sites that I have been close to but haven't visited:
- Grand Pré landscape and Joggins fossil cliffs in Nova Scotia – these are on the shores of the Bay of Fundy, so I've definitely experienced similar places in the region, but can't remember going to these ones in particular.
- Cahokia Mounds – I've been in the area (around Saint Louis and Southern Illinois), but didn't have time to check them out
- Dinosaur Provincial Park – I've been to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, so I've seen some fossils in Alberta, but I don't recall visiting this park.
- Westminster Palace and Abbey – I saw it from the Jubilee Bridge when I was in London overnight, but that's the closest I got.
- The Forth Bridge – I think I could almost make it out from Arthur's Peak in Edinburgh.
- Durham Cathedral – when I took the train from London to Edinburgh, it passed through Durham, so I may have seen it from the train window. Durham is a place I'd like to visit (more than driving through) some day, I think.
- Carcassonne – I saw its walls on a bus ride from Marseille to Toulouse. As with the previous entry, I think it deserves a proper visit.
- Fontenay Abbey – I didn't visit this particular abbey, but I did stop at another Cistercian abbey in the region.
- Avignon and Arles – I passed through these places on the train/bus while I was in France, and would have liked to stop if I'd had more time there.
- Lonja de la Seda, Valencia – I was in the Spanish city of Valencia (even the nearby Central Market) but don't recall seeing this particular place.
- Old Sana'a – I connected through the Sana'a airport once, but didn't leave to see any of the city.
There are a number of other UNESCO sites I would like to visit. Here are the top 12 (ordered by their official number, not by my level of interest):
- Colorado/New Mexico native sites: Taos Pueblo, Chaco canyon, Mesa Verde – relevant post.
- Carthage and the old medina in Tunis.
- Hanseatic towns: Bryggen, Norway; Lübeck, Germany; Visby, Sweden; Riga, Latvia; Tallinn, Estonia. Also Vilnius in Lithuania, which isn't a Hanseatic town, but is also in the Baltic Sea region.
- Toledo in Spain.
- Tongariro National Park, New Zealand.
- Panama Viejo y Casco Antiguo.
- London sites like Kew and Greenwich.
- There are four (different but all fascinating) biomes in Brazil that have representative UNESCO sites: Amazon, Pantanal, Cerrado, and Atlantic Forest.
- Cornwall and Devon – I'd like to visit this part of the UK.
- Bordeaux – this is a part of France I didn't make it to on my first trip there.
- The Wadden Sea, a tidal zone stretching from the Netherlands to Denmark.
- Amsterdam's canals.
Other interesting directories maintained by UNESCO include biosphere reserves and intangible cultural heritage.
To wrap this post up, I'll circle back to Lunenburg and share a couple of photos from the town:
