Tuesday, 19 July 2005, 12:25 am Press Release: United Nations
Biblical Sites In Israel, Albanian Museum City Join Un World
Heritage List
New York, Jul 18 2005
Biblical
settlement mounds in Israel, a museum city in Albania, a
3,000-year-old necropolis in Italy and a sacred grove dotted
with shrines in Nigeria are among 17 sites newly inscribed
on the United Nations list of places to be preserved as part
of the heritage of humankind.
With the latest
inscriptions, Bahrain, Moldova, and Bosnia and Herzegovina
for the first time enter the UN Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
World Heritage List, which now numbers 812 sites – 628
cultural, 160 natural and 24 mixed – in 137 States
Parties.
UNESCO's World Heritage Committee added the new
sites at a weeklong meeting ending in Durban, South Africa,
yesterday.
The new sites are:
The Museum-City of
Gjirokastra in Albania, a rare example of a well-preserved
Ottoman town, with a 13th-century citadel;
The
Qal'at al-Bahrain Archaeological Site in Bahrain, an
artificial mound created by many successive layers of human
occupation from 2300 B.C. to the 16th century
A.D;
The Residential and Cultural Complex of the
Radziwill Family at Nesvizh in Belarus, dating from the 16th
century;
The Struve Arc in Belarus, Estonia,
Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Moldova, Russia, Sweden
and Ukraine, a chain of survey triangulations carried out
between 1816 and 1855 by the astronomer Friedrich Georg
Wilhelm Struve;
Advertisement - scroll to continue reading
The Plantin-Moretus Museum in
Antwerp, Belgium, a printing plant and publishing house
dating from the Renaissance and Baroque
periods;
The Old Bridge Area of the Old City of
Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which developed in the
15th and 16th century as an Ottoman frontier
town;
The Humberstone and Santa Laura works in
Chile where workers from Chile, Peru and Bolivia lived in
company towns and forged a distinctive communal
culture;
The historic centre of Macao in China, a
port under Portuguese administration until 1999, with
historic streets and residential, religious and public
buildings;
The colonial town of Cienfuegos in
Cuba, a trading place for sugar cane, tobacco and coffee
founded in 1819 and initially settled by immigrants of
French origin;
The city of Le Havre in France, a
port severely bombed during World War II and rebuilt
according to a plan that maintains its unity and
integrity;
The mausoleum of Oljaytu in
Soltaniyeh, Iran, built in 1302-1312, an outstanding example
of Persian architecture and a key monument in the
development of its Islamic architecture;
The
Biblical tells of Megiddo, Hazor and Beer Sheba in Israel,
pre-historic settlement mounds containing substantial
remains of cities with biblical connections;
The
four Nabatean towns of Haluza, Mamshit, Avdat and Shivta in
Israel, spread along routes linking them to the
Mediterranean end of the Incense and Spice
route;
Syracuse and the Rocky Necropolis of
Pantalica in Italy, containing outstanding vestiges dating
back to Greek and Roman times, with 5,000 tombs dating from
the 13th to 7th century B.C.;
The Osun-Osogbo
Sacred Grove in Nigeria, one of the last remnants of primary
high forest in southern Nigeria, regarded as the abode of
the goddess of fertility Osun and dotted with shrines and
sculptures honouring Osun and other Yoruba
deities;
The historical centre of Yaroslavl in
Russia, renowned for its many 17h century churches, an
outstanding example of the urban planning reform Empress
Catherine the Great ordered for the whole of Russia in
1763;
Kunya-Urgench in Turkmenistan, containing a
series of monuments from the 11th to 16th centuries,
including a mosque, the gates of a caravanserai, fortresses,
mausoleums and a
minaret.
If you're using Scoop for work, your organisation needs to pay a small license fee with Scoop Pro. We think that's fair, because your organisation is benefiting from using our news resources. In return, we'll also give your team access to pro news tools and keep Scoop free for personal use, because public access to news is important!