UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Language:    Published: 2018-09-23  Keywords: traveling, UNESCO, collecting

Briefly

I try to visit as many UNESCO World Heritage Sites as possible during my lifetime. They are often worth it.

Article history

• 2019-05-27 Added two new visits in United States of America.
• 2018-12-28 Added ten new visits in Jordan, Israel, Palestine.
• 2018-09-23 Article is published.
• 2018-09-19 Writing the article is started.

Background

I've always liked travelling and that's what I'm going to do the rest of my life. Finland is already conquered, Europe is half done and world travelling has been progressing quite nicely.

However, the number of different countries visited shouldn't be the objective but the quality of the journeys. Besides eating and drinking well, I try to experience, learn and report as much as possible while producing CO2 to the earth atmosphere.

So, could there be a meter to use in travel planning which directed to experience and learn the best bits of the world and human kind, a better meter than the number of visited countries which basically means just random border crossings of different administrational regions.

The best collection of the most precious cultural heritage sites and natural miracles of the world, that I've found, is UNESCO World Heritage Sites List which contains 1092 sites at the moment (2018-09-22). The list can be criticized of being politically influenced but a list like this can't be created objectively. As far as I know, UNESCO exists for educational purposes.

First time I knew I was visiting a UNESCO site was in Alta (Norway) in June 2003. But it was 2018-09-19 when I first time calculated them. The amount was 63 out of the total number 1092 at that moment, so I had already done 5.8 %! UPDATE: 73 in 2018-12-28 (6.7 %). UPDATE: 75 in 2019-05-27 (6.9 %)

Honestly, visiting all of them is absolutely impossible. The current rate is about 10-30 new sites per year and even if one had all the money, time and health, this couldn't be done because the permits, bookings, random temporal close downs, weather and medical issues make it just too hard. Moreover I don't want to travel around the globe only running after these sites without doing anything else in the destinations. Nevertheless pursuing the goal gives ideas where to go next.

List

The UNESCO World Heritage sites which I've visited:

Statistics

Number of new sites visited per year

Links

• Official list (UNESCO)
• List by date (Wikipedia)
• List by country (Wikipedia)