Travel Tips

UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. In 1972, UNESCO member states signed the World Heritage Convention, which established the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (based in Paris) and the World Heritage List. This is designed to identify cultural and natural sites of global importance, with a view to ensuring their protection. Member states nominate sites for consideration by a Committee against criteria set down in the Convention.

We first became aware of the UNESCO programme when we visited the palace and gardens of Sans Souci at Potsdam in July 1997. Subsequent reading revealed that we had actually visited five World Heritage Sites on that holiday, all of which had been high-points (Roskilde Cathedral, Sans Souci, Prague, Cologne Cathedral and Aachen Cathedral, plus the Upper Middle Rhine Valley, which was inscribed later, in 2002). Since then we have looked-out for World Heritage Sites on all of our visits, and we have not been disappointed. Some are pretty obvious candidates (such as the Grand Place in Brussels, or Tallinn Old Town), others less so. The Viking settlement of Birka, near Stockholm, is a particularly good example of a highly rewarding and enjoyable visit that we might not otherwise have made.

Our first natural World Heritage site was the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, which we passed through on our way from Toronto to Vancouver in November 2003.

We have visited about 27 World Heritage sites so far, all in Northern Europe, except for the Canadian Rockies.

For more information on World Heritage Sites, including an explanation of the criteria, a list of the sites we have visited (with links), and our own list of sites we would like to nominate (just a bit of fun!), see our World Heritage web pages.

The official WHC website is at www.unesco.org/whc/

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Standing Stones at Stenness, Orkney

Some World Heritage Sites can cover a number of places over a wide area. The "Heart of Neolithic Orkney" for example covers several stone age monuments scattered across West Mainland, including the famous standing stones pictured here, and the excellent stone age village at Skara Brae.