BestUNESCO World Heritage Sites
UNESCO-listed cultural and natural sites chosen for being worth the journey. There are well over a thousand inscriptions and they are emphatically not equally interesting — the designation records significance to humanity, not visitor experience, and a fair number are working landscapes or archaeological sites with very little to look at.
Iguazu National Park
Argentina / Brazil
Details & links
A sweeping system of hundreds of waterfalls spanning the Argentine-Brazilian border, set within subtropical rainforest rich in wildlife and inscribed for its natural grandeur.
Great Barrier Reef
Queensland, Australia
Details & links
The world's largest coral reef system, stretching along Australia's northeast coast and supporting an immense diversity of marine life across thousands of individual reefs.
Historic Centre of Bruges
Bruges, Belgium
Details & links
A well-preserved medieval Flemish trading city laced with canals, valued for its Gothic architecture and its historic role as a hub of commerce and early Netherlandish painting.
Historic Centre of Olinda
Olinda, Pernambuco
Details & links
A 16th-century Portuguese colonial town on hills above the Atlantic, rebuilt in the 18th century after the Dutch burned it; twenty churches, convents and a dense grain of pastel houses and walled gardens survive.
Historic Centre of Salvador de Bahia
Pelourinho, Salvador
Details & links
The upper town of Brazil’s first capital, founded in 1549 — steep cobbled streets of brightly painted 17th- and 18th-century houses, Baroque churches and the gilded interior of São Francisco, and the centre of Afro-Brazilian culture in Bahia.
Great Wall of China
China
Details & links
A vast series of fortifications built and rebuilt over many centuries to defend China's northern frontier, ranking among the most ambitious construction feats in human history.
Imperial Palaces — Forbidden City
Beijing, China
Details & links
The vast palace complex at the heart of Beijing that served as the seat of Chinese imperial power for nearly five centuries, housing the world's largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures.
Dazu Rock Carvings
Dazu, Chongqing, China
Details & links
Some 50,000 religious statues cut into cliff faces across Chongqing’s Dazu district between the 9th and 13th centuries, blending Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian subjects — the Baodingshan and Beishan groups are the largest.
Port, Fortresses and Group of Monuments, Cartagena
Cartagena, Colombia
Old City of Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Details & links
A walled Adriatic port that flourished as an independent maritime republic, preserving intact medieval ramparts, Gothic and Renaissance churches, palaces and fountains.
Plitvice Lakes National Park
Croatia
Details & links
A chain of terraced lakes linked by cascading waterfalls and travertine barriers, set amid dense forest and inscribed for its distinctive natural water-shaped landscape.
Historic Centre of Prague
Prague, Czech Republic
Details & links
A remarkably preserved medieval core spanning Prague Castle, Charles Bridge and the Old Town, blending Gothic, Baroque and Romanesque architecture along the Vltava River.
Galápagos Islands
Ecuador
Details & links
A remote volcanic archipelago whose isolated wildlife inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, home to species found nowhere else on Earth.
Memphis and its Necropolis — Pyramids of Giza
Giza, Egypt
Details & links
The pyramids and Great Sphinx built for the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom, the sole surviving wonder of the ancient world and a feat of early monumental engineering.
Historic Centre of Tallinn
Tallinn, Estonia
Details & links
A Hanseatic trading town that came through the war largely intact — its 13th-century street plan, merchant houses, guild halls and nearly two kilometres of city wall with 20 surviving towers still standing.
Palace of Versailles
Versailles, France
Details & links
The grand royal residence of the French monarchy, famed for its Hall of Mirrors and formal gardens, which set a model of palace design imitated across Europe.
Mont-Saint-Michel and its Bay
Normandy, France
Details & links
A tidal island crowned by a Benedictine abbey, rising dramatically from its bay and long a major pilgrimage site admired for its Gothic architecture and setting.
Acropolis of Athens
Athens, Greece
Details & links
The citadel above Athens crowned by the Parthenon, a defining monument of classical Greek civilisation and an enduring symbol of ancient democracy and architectural achievement.
Old Town of Corfu
Corfu, Greece
Details & links
A fortified port town shaped by four centuries of Venetian rule, its three defensive works designed by Venetian engineers and its neoclassical housing stock later reworked under French and British administration.
Budapest: Banks of the Danube & Buda Castle
Budapest, Hungary
Details & links
The riverside panorama of the Hungarian capital, taking in the Buda Castle quarter, Parliament and the Danube embankments, illustrating successive periods of urban and architectural history.
Historic Centre of Rome
Rome, Italy
Details & links
The heart of the ancient Roman Empire, preserving the Forum, Colosseum, Pantheon and centuries of layered architecture spanning classical, medieval and Renaissance eras.
Historic Centre of Florence
Florence, Italy
Details & links
Birthplace of the Renaissance, home to the Duomo, Uffizi collections and works by Michelangelo, Botticelli and Brunelleschi that shaped Western art and architecture.
Venice and its Lagoon
Venice, Italy
Details & links
A city built across more than a hundred lagoon islands, celebrated for its canals, Byzantine and Gothic architecture, and its role as a medieval maritime trading power.
Cinque Terre
Liguria, Italy
Details & links
Five centuries-old fishing villages clinging to steep cliffs above the Ligurian Sea, linked by terraced vineyards and coastal paths that reflect a distinctive human-shaped landscape.
Amalfi Coast
Campania, Italy
Details & links
A dramatic stretch of Mediterranean coastline where towns are built into steep terrain, recognised as a cultural landscape of outstanding scenic and architectural value.
City of Verona
Verona, Italy
Details & links
An exceptionally well-preserved Roman city whose layered fabric — the Arena, Scaliger Tombs, Renaissance piazzas and medieval streets — illustrates two thousand years of continuous urban evolution.
Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto
Kyoto, Japan
Details & links
A collection of temples, shrines and gardens across Japan's former imperial capital, illustrating the development of Japanese religious and garden architecture over many centuries.
Petra
Ma'an, Jordan
Details & links
An ancient Nabataean city carved directly into rose-coloured sandstone cliffs, once a wealthy caravan trading hub famed for its rock-cut tombs and temples.
Town of Luang Prabang
Luang Prabang, Laos
Details & links
A royal city at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers, blending traditional Lao wooden architecture and gilded Buddhist temples with French colonial buildings in a remarkably intact urban landscape.
Historic Centre of Macao
Macau
Details & links
The oldest surviving European settlement in China — a compact core of Portuguese colonial squares, baroque church façades and Chinese temples built side by side over more than 400 years.
Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan
Mexico City, Mexico
Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor
Kotor, Montenegro
Details & links
A medieval walled city at the innermost point of a drowned river canyon, encircled by near-vertical karst mountains and five kilometers of Venetian-era fortifications climbing to San Giovanni Fortress.
Medina of Marrakesh
Marrakesh, Morocco
Details & links
A historic walled old town founded in the eleventh century, centred on the Jemaa el-Fnaa square and preserving mosques, palaces, gardens and traditional souks.
Te Wahipounamu
South Island, New Zealand
Details & links
A wilderness region of fjords, glaciers, rainforest and peaks along New Zealand's southwest, preserving landscapes shaped by glaciation and rare native wildlife.
Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu
Cusco, Peru
Details & links
A fifteenth-century Inca citadel set high on an Andean ridge, celebrated for its precise dry-stone construction and its dramatic mountain-and-cloud-forest setting.
Historic Centre of Lima
Lima, Peru
Details & links
The colonial core of Peru's capital, once the chief city of Spanish South America, preserving Baroque churches, convents and mansions from the viceregal era.
Cultural Landscape of Sintra
Sintra, Portugal
Details & links
A wooded hill region dotted with romantic palaces, estates and gardens, recognised as a pioneering example of nineteenth-century Romantic landscape architecture in Europe.
Robben Island
Cape Town, South Africa
Details & links
A former prison island where Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid figures were held, inscribed as a symbol of the triumph of democracy over oppression.
Alhambra, Generalife and Albaicín
Granada, Spain
Details & links
A hilltop palace and fortress complex from the Nasrid dynasty, considered a masterpiece of Moorish art with its intricate stucco, tilework and water gardens.
Works of Antoni Gaudí
Barcelona, Spain
Details & links
A group of buildings by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, including the Sagrada Família and Park Güell, recognised for their pioneering and highly original Modernista design.
Historic City of Ayutthaya
Ayutthaya, Thailand
Details & links
The ruins of a former Siamese royal capital, whose prang towers and monasteries recall a prosperous kingdom before its destruction in the eighteenth century.
Historic Areas of Istanbul
Istanbul, Turkey
Details & links
The historic peninsula where Byzantine and Ottoman empires met, encompassing Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and Topkapı Palace at the crossroads of Europe and Asia.
Göreme National Park and the Rock Sites of Cappadocia
Cappadocia, Turkey
Old Town of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, Scotland
Details & links
The Scottish capital's contrasting medieval Old Town and Georgian New Town, inscribed together for their exceptional urban layout and the survival of two distinct historic townscapes.
Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites
Wiltshire, England
Details & links
A prehistoric monument of standing stones on Salisbury Plain, erected in phases over thousands of years and widely regarded as a ceremonial and astronomical site whose precise construction method and purpose remain subjects of study.
Yellowstone National Park
Wyoming, United States
Details & links
The world's first national park, sitting atop a volcanic hotspot and holding roughly half the planet's geysers, including Old Faithful, alongside abundant wildlife.
Statue of Liberty
New York, United States
Details & links
A colossal copper statue gifted by France and unveiled in 1886, standing in New York Harbor as an enduring emblem of liberty and welcome to immigrants.
Taliesin West
Scottsdale, Arizona
Details & links
Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home and studio, built from 1937 out of desert rock set in concrete with canvas roofs, and one of eight Wright buildings inscribed together in 2019 as The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Ha Long Bay
Quảng Ninh, Vietnam
Details & links
A bay dotted with thousands of limestone karst islands and pillars rising from emerald water, inscribed for its outstanding natural beauty and geological significance.
Hội An Ancient Town
Quảng Nam, Vietnam
Details & links
A former trading port whose exceptionally well-preserved Old Town reflects the fusion of local and foreign cultures — Chinese, Japanese and French — that shaped it during its centuries as a commercial hub on the South China Sea.
No results — try a different place or country.