Historically Speaking: Bethlehem Moravian church settlement in Pennsylvania named World Heritage Site
Founded in 1741 by a small band of Moravian Church immigrants, the historic district joins a list that includes the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Giza and the Eiffel Tower. KATHRYN POST, of Religion News Service, reports…
Rome’s first highway added to UNESCO World Heritage list
Rome, Italy/Bucharest, Romania Reuters The Appian Way, the ancient Romans’ first highway and a tourist attraction in modern Rome, has been added to the United Nations’ cultural heritage list. Known as the Regina Viarum or Queen of Roads, it connected the capital of the early Roman state to the south-eastern town of Brindisi. It is […]
World War I cemeteries, Rwanda genocide sites, Argentine torture centre declared UNESCO World Heritage
Paris, France Reuters World War I cemeteries in Belgium and France, the hills of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and a former torture centre in Argentina have been declared UNESCO World Heritage sites as the UN agency ends a moratorium on memorial sites for human suffering. So far, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland and the Hiroshima […]
Venice avoids being added to UNESCO list of endangered sites
Rome, Italy Reuters A UNESCO committee has decided not to add Venice to the organisation’s World Heritage List in Danger, disregarding a recommendation from experts and sparing the Italian government from an embarrassing verdict on the city’s condition. “The World Heritage Committee…has made the decision not to inscribe Venice and its Lagoon on the World […]
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef off UNESCO danger list, still under “serious threat”
Sydney, Australia Reuters A UNESCO heritage committee on Tuesday stopped short of listing Australia’s Great Barrier Reef as a site that is “in danger” but warned the world’s biggest coral reef ecosystem remained under “serious threat” from pollution and the warming of oceans. A colony of mushroom leather coral grows on the Great Barrier Reef […]
Heritage “disaster”: Restoration lags for Syria’s famed Roman ruins at Palmyra and other war-battered historic sites
ABBY SEWELL and ALBERT AJI, of Associated Press, report on the issues facing the preservation and restoration of Syria’s ancient heritage sites…
Lebanon hopes UNESCO danger listing could save crumbling modernist fairground
Tripoli, Lebanon Reuters Its arch is cracking and its vast pavilions lie empty, but the crumbling Rachid Karami International Fair in Lebanon’s port city Tripoli now has hope of revival, having been added to the United Nations’ list of world heritage sites in danger. Designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer in 1962, the collection of […]
UNESCO supports Ukraine bid to put Odesa on World Heritage list
Paris, France Reuters United Nations cultural agency UNESCO said on Tuesday it supported a bid by Ukraine to put its port city of Odesa on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Following a meeting of Ukraine Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko with UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay at the agency’s Paris headquarters, UNESCO said it had mobilised experts […]
Witnesses say Tigrayan forces in Ethiopia retook Lalibela, UN Heritage site
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Reuters Rebellious Tigrayan forces have recaptured the Ethiopian town of Lalibela, witnesses told Reuters on Sunday, less than two weeks after the military and its allies took control of it as part of a broader offensive that pushed back Tigrayan forces on multiple fronts. Lalibela is a town in the Amhara region […]
Great Works: The rock-hewn churches of Lalibela
In the headlines recently over fears for their future, DAVID ADAMS takes a look at Ethiopia’s famous rock-hewn churches…