World Heritage: Historic Centre of Rome

Still catching up...

Also, last year, I went to Rome and saw my 71st World Heritage Site. Technically, the complete name is "Historic Centre of Rome, the Properties of the Holy See in that City Enjoying Extraterritorial Rights and San Paolo Fuori le Mura." 

It was already going to be an extremely short trip, but it got even shorter when my inbound flight was a few hours late. I can't wait to go back when I have more time.

At the time, that gave me 71 out of 1223, for 5.81% of all sites worldwide. New ones were recently inducted, so I'm at 71 out of 1248, or 5.69%. I've been some neat places this year, but unfortunately no World Heritage Sites.

World Heritage: Historic Town of St George and Related Fortifications

I have kind of abandoned this blog. It occurs to me, though, as the social media landscape gets more fragmented, I might want a place independent of any one corporate site to share my musings. So I'm starting with catching up on some long-running features.

Last year, on a cruise with Robyn, I visited my 70th World Heritage Site, the Historic Town of St George and Related Fortifications in Bermuda.

World Heritage: Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks

 

UNESCO just finished inscribing new sites into the World Heritage List, bringing the total to 1199. Earlier this month, I visited the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, which was part of the Hopewell Culture Earthworks, which were just inducted.

The earthworks were constructed in what is now Ohio almost 2000 years ago. While not as visually impressive as some of the other sites, the earthworks offer an intriguing glimpse into a fascinating culture that influenced this continent long ago.

This is my 69th site, representing 5.75% of the total sites.

World Heritage: Giant's Causeway

In April, I visited Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, my 68th World Heritage site. That's out of 1157 total, with more due to be inscribed at next month's meeting in Saudi Arabia.

World Heritage: Historic District of Panamá

 

Catching up on my World Heritage posting, last November I went to Panamá. The one World Heritage site I visited there was the Historic District of Panama City, part of the "Archaeological Site of Panamá Viejo and Historic District of Panamá" site. I took a bike tour of it. (I also took a pub crawl of it, but that's a different story.)

World Heritage: Belem Tower

 Last month, I visited my 65th World Heritage Site, Belem Tower in Lisbon, Portugal.

Above is not a picture of Belem Tower; it's what the Stable Diffusion AI drew when I gave it the prompt "Belem Tower".

Here's what Belem Tower actually looks like. It was built in the Lisbon Harbor both as a defensive fortification and to commemorate all the voyages of the Age of Discovery.

It was neat to climb the stairs and enjoy the views of the harbor.

The other part of the World Heritage Site is a monastery. I did not visit it, but here I am holding some pastries in front of it.

World Heritage Update

Since I'm re-invigorating the blog, I thought I would update some of my more interesting fixations. One of those is seeing how many World Heritage Sites I can visit.

Since my last update, more sites have been inscribed (though none I've visited), bringing the total to 1154.

I have visited one site in that time: Cahokia Mounds.

It's in Illinois, just a little bit east of St. Louis. It consists of a number of prehistoric earthworks. It is unusual in that it is a state park.

Honestly, that last fact was constantly on my mind. Illinois' senators have tried to get it named a national park. I could only imagine how much of a better job the NPS could do, both in terms of visitor experience and preservation. Still, neat to visit.

This brings my total sites visited to 64. My percentage of the total visited drops ever so slightly lower to 5.55%. I have plans to visit another in September -- stay tuned!

World Heritage Update: 2019 Inscriptions

UNESCO has inscribed 29 new properties onto the World Heritage list, bringing the total to 1121. Of those, the only one I have visited is "The Twentieth-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright," specifically Fallingwater and the Guggenheim.

That makes it my 63rd World Heritage site. As I have not visited any of the 2018 inscriptions, my percentage falls to 5.62%. I don't see a prospect of visiting any more this year.

World Heritage Update: Great Smoky Mountains

Last weekend, on a trip to Tennessee, I visited Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a World Heritage Site. This was the 62nd World Heritage Site I've visited.

I went to the Sugarlands visitors center and hiked a short trail.

Since my phone captures everywhere I go, this is what it looked like. My phone knew (though I didn't) that I hiked to the John Ownby Cabin and back.

I couldn't tell at the time what made this more special than other National Parks and thus worthy of being a World Heritage Site. It turns out it's the biodiversity, so it makes sense that doesn't jump out at me. (Though I did see some nice trees.)

This is the first site I've visited since I was in Brussels almost two years ago. None of the sites inscribed in 2016 or 2017 were ones I had already visited, so my percentage has dipped from the all-time high of 5.92% sites visited in 2015 to 5.78%.

I don't have any more visits I can see coming soon, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Buildings won't make it in before 2019, so I don't see a path to 6% right now. But you never know!

World Heritage Update: Brussels

I was in Brussels last week, where I visited my 61st World Heritage Site, La Grande-Place. Brussels has two more sites, but my trip was short, and I was very sick, so I only visited the one. 61 out of 1031 is 5.92%, a new high percentage! (Sometimes the percentage goes down due to new sites being inscribed.)



To make sure that it really was a new high, I wrote a spreadsheet tracking number of sites visited as of a given year. (For simplicity's sake, I only considered year-end totals.) I had to track both the year I visited and the year the site was inscribed, so visits to sites that were later inscribed only show up after the inscription. Then I compare it against the number of total sites inscribed to see my percentage. Here's a graph (I smoothed it to make it look nicer):

So, yes, 5.92% is a new high for me, beating 2012's previous record of 5.82%. Unless they add more than 35 (which they haven't done since 2000), I won't need more than 3 new ones to break 6% for the first time. It looks like the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings will be inscribed, so that's one. I have no idea which ones the other two might be, but I will try to make it happen.

World Heritage Update: Three "New" Sites

My quest to visit World Heritage Sites has slowed down. I travel less these days, and I tend to travel to places I've already been. For the first time in years, I have been able to take advantage of another way of adding sites to my visited list.

Earlier this month, UNESCO added 27 new sites to the list. I've visited 3 of them! That's a pretty good hit rate.

The three are:

• San Antonio Missions: Ben and I visited The Alamo on a cross-country drive in August 1993.
• The Forth Bridge: A Scotland tour my parents and I took in September 1994 visited this bridge.
• Singapore Botanical Gardens: I visited them in December 2007.

So I'm now at 60 out of 1031, or 5.8%, which is the same (up to rounding) as my all-time high.

World Heritage: 2012 in Review

I visited two World Heritage Sites this year, both in the same afternoon, earlier this month. Left, you see me at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, and to the right, you see a picture I took in the Forbidden City.

Looking at this year, I said, "I can rent a car on my free afternoon and drive to Canterbury, and then see how many of Beijing's six world heritage sites I can cram into a 4-day trip." Well, I decided against renting a car (instead opting for the non-World Heritage enjoyment of Cambridge), and I could cram in two of the World Heritage Sites in Beijing into my free afternoon.

So my total is 56 out of 962, or 5.8%, which is back where it was at the end of last year (actually slightly better, but rounding makes that disappear). In 2013, I don't know if I'll make it two sites, which is what I need to keep pace with the addition of new sites. (I have not visited any of the 2013 nominees.) But I'll certainly see what I can do!

World Heritage Update: Down to 5.6%

UNESCO inscribed 26 new World Heritage sites this month, bringing the total List to 962. I haven't been to any of the new sites, so my total is still at 54. My percentage drops from 5.8% to 5.6%. I haven't seen any new sites this year, and with my travel schedule somewhat curtailed, I may not see any. I do have a possible trip to China, but that's up in the air for a number of reasons.

Of the new sites, which ones would I like to visit?

• Rock Islands Southern Lagoon: I'm always up for a coral reef.
• Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between the Mountain and the Sea: I'd love to visit there with Christina and see some of the places she remembers from living there in the 80s. And I'd love to see the Christ the Redeemer statue in person.
• Site of Xanadu: I don't know which would be harder to get out of my head, the Coleridge poem, or the Newton-John song.
• Birthplace of Jesus: Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route, Bethlehem: This seems like a fairly iconic destination. Even if it doesn't live up to the hype, it's worth seeing to know whether it is as interesting as it sounds.

I'm sure some of the other ones are interesting if I knew more about them (and some are not). Most are in countries I have no expectation of visiting, so I'm in no hurry to research them.

For the past week or two, I've been recording a 5-minute program called "World Heritage Wonders," which is produced by NHK, the Japanese broadcaster. The first few I saw were about the Shiretoko Peninsula, and I was afraid they'd all be about the same place -- it almost seemed ike a travel ad. (But did make me want to visit.) But then they moved on to the
Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Gokayama, so I wondered whether all of them would be in Japan. The next one, though, was about the Taj Mahal, and most recently I've seen one on the Jongmyo Shrine, which I visited last year. Now I'm wondering whether they'll visit sites outside Asia. Either way, it's enjoyable, and the 5-minute time span is about right for me these days.

World Heritage: 2011 in Review

2011 was a pretty good year for seeing World Heritage Sites for me. In addition to discovering I had visited one in 2000, I visited a site in Canada, one in the UK, one in Holland, and three in Korea. Six is my biggest haul since 2003, when I made it to a ridiculous eight.


My total is now at 54 out of 936, or 5.8%. It's up about two percentage points in the last six years. I did some quick estimates recently, and I think I'll top out in the 10-15% range some day, but that day does not appear to be anywhere close to hand.

If in 2012, I go to the same conferences as I did this year, I can rent a car on my free afternoon and drive to Canterbury, and then see how many of Beijing's six world heritage sites I can cram into a 4-day trip. On the other hand, it's a lot harder to travel with toddlers at home, so 2012 may see the percentage slide back towards five percent as more sites are added.

World Heritage Update: Seoul

There are three World Heritage Sites near central Seoul. There is one in the city of Suwon, reachable by the Seoul subway system, but I didn't make it there. If I ever come back to Seoul, it will be at the top of my priority list.

Changdeokgung

 

The first site of my visit was Changdeokgung. It was also the first taxi ride I had taken in Seoul, and I took it as a good sign that the driver knew where it was -- I had some confused moments with taxis in Amsterdam, but hey -- Changdeokgung is one of the national treasures, so why wouldn't he know where it was?

Since it was closed on Monday, I made sure to visit on Sunday. There are guided tours in English twice daily, so I got there in time for one of them.

The history of Changdeokgung is sort of a mixed bag. It was built 600 years ago as a "backup palace". 400 years ago, the Japanese invaded and destroyed it and the main palace. For some reason, this one got rebuilt first and became the new main palace. Then, 100 years ago, the Japanese invaded again. During the occupation, Changdeokgung burnt down, and some of the restoration involved dragging buildings over from the main palace. Since then, some more restoration has gone into undoing the previous restoration.

As a result, it's not clear how much is "original", but maybe that it what allows everything to be brightly painted, and more evocative of what things looked like back in the day than a fading old building.

Later that day, I headed to Samneung Park, home to two of the Royal Tombs of the Joseon Dynasty (the one that ruled from 600 years ago until deposed by the Japanese 100 years ago). I later learned that the tombs were required to be outside of the city of Seoul (but within a day's ride so that the tomb could be visited by the king's descendants). Today, the location of these two tombs has been absorbed by the city of Seoul, but I give that as an excuse why the taxi driver nor the first three hotel employees consulted knew where this park was. Finally, someone wrote something down in Korean for the driver and off we went.

Samneung Park

It was a relief when the taxi driver dropped me off and first I saw a park, then a World Heritage sign. I had no confidence how clearly things had been conveyed to him. I ended up having a nice walk on a cold day to see the two tombs (from a little bit of a distance, of course). Then it go dark and really cold, and I took a taxi back home (that's where the card with the hotel name on it comes in handy.)

On Monday, on my free afternoon, I headed to Jongmyo Shrine. I delayed heading over there until about 45 minutes before the English-language tour, since I didn't see any great advantage to getting there more than half an hour early. My request to go there was once again met by befuddlement from the taxi driver. I didn't understand this, since it was a major treasure not far from Changdeokgung. Finally, exasperated, I said, "It's right near Changdeokgung." Rather than recognition, this got me an offer to take me to Changdeokgung. Since I had Jongmyo programmed into my GPS receiver, I figured the walk from the palace wouldn't be too bad.

As it turned out, I couldn't head directly there because I had to follow the roads rather than straight line. Finally, I came to...the wall around Jongmyo. I had programmed the coordinates of the shrine itself rather than the entrance.

I took a quick guess and headed clockwise. After a few minutes, I came across a major road, which seemed promising for an entrance. Unfortunately there was construction along the road, which obscured whether or not there was an entrance -- and blocked the sidewalk. Traffic was at close to a standstill, so I felt relatively safe shimmying along the side of the road...but unfortunately, that did not lead to an entrance. So around and around I went. Eventually, after circling about 90% of the wall, I saw lines of tour buses (the taxi driver had never heard of this place). I rushed up to the entrance a few minutes after the last English tour of the day and figured I might be able to talk my way into joining up with it. But then I was asked for my ticket. Which I had to buy at a ticket booth separate from the entrance. Fortunately, there was no line, so after I forked over the equivalent of about 70 cents, I returned to the entrance...where I was pointed to the English-language tour in the distance. Whew.

Jongmyo Shrine

I probably would have appreciated the introduction to the tour, but what I gathered from the rest of it (and the answers to my questions) was that this is where Jongmyo rulers would come to commune with the spirits of their ancestors (and predecessors). The shrine contains the spirit tablets for the ancestors, and during a ceremony, the spirits come down from heaven and...I guess can be chatted up? I'm not too clear on that part. Anyway, it completed a trio of World Heritage sites from the Jongmyo era...the seat of physical power, the resting place of the leaders' bodies and the resting place of their souls. Three World Heritage sites in 30 hours (and four in 72 hours)...not bad.

World Heritage Update: Amsterdam

There is one World Heritage Site in Amsterdam -- the "Seventeenth-century canal ring area of Amsterdam inside the Singelgracht." It was inscribed in 2010, and it seems odd that one of the most important cities in Western Europe during the Renaissance took that long. I'm guessing because it didn't fit 100% UNESCO's notion of "site", so they had to come up with something. So I had dinner there at an Italian restaurant last Thursday night. What, that doesn't count? I think it does, although it would be one of my more tenuous claims. Not as bad as the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, where I merely stopped by and admired the architecture, but close.

Never fear, though. One sentence late in the citation mentions, "In World War II around 100,000 Amsterdam Jews were deported, the majority of whom lived in the canal districts." By far the most interesting site in the canal district seemed to me to be the Anne Frank House. So Friday night, I visited there.

I have actually never read her diary. Christina points out that I will have an unusual opportunity. Most people visited the house and pictured the events of the book. I will be able to read the book (the new, unexpurgated version) and see the setting in my mind's eye. I'm not sure when I will be able to get to the book. The house itself was very depressing. I know it's supposed to be uplifting -- her words lived on where she didn't, and are much more influential than anything her oppressors wrote. UNESCO runs a parallel list to the World Heritage List, intended for important "documentary heritage" -- the Memory of the World Register. Anne Frank's Diary is inscribed there. But I spent much of the visit just galled at what I knew the eventual ending would be. The museum does an excellent job at showing the entire sweep of her story, and it doesn't shy away from the death camps. There are graphic pictures, and a touching interview with her best friend, who tried to keep her alive until the liberation.

Anyway, on that cheery note, we mark the 51st World Heritage Site I visited.

On a somewhat lighter note, the museum had the Shelly Winters Oscar from the movie adaptation of the Diary. I recalled that entertainment awards on permanent public display constitute a waymarking category -- and a fairly rare one, at that. So I posted it as the 19th waymark in that category.

World Heritage Update: Tentative Lists

One way for me to increase the number of World Heritage Sites I've visited is to, well, visit more World Heritage Sites. A less obvious way is for places I've already visited to be inscribed on the list. The Sydney Opera House was inscribed in 2007; Christina and I had visited it in 2002. I visited at least three other sites "before they were stars": Brugge, Edinburgh and Jeju.

Besides lobbying UNESCO (that just got trickier), what can I do to increase the odds that sites get inscribed after I visit them? As it turns out, UNESCO now requires any sites to be on a "tentative list" before being nominated. So I can try to visit sites on the tentative lists and then hope they get moved to the real list. This method is not foolproof -- sites may get withdrawn from the tentative lists, and new sites that I haven't visited may replace them. Still, it is a good way at increasing the odds.

With that in mind, what sites have I already visited that are on the tentative lists?

• The Alamo
• Frank Lloyd Wright Buildings
• The Great Western Railway
• Innsbruck
• Shakespeare's Stratford
• Spanish Wine Regions

I thought there might be more, but this isn't a bad list. It looks like the Alamo and Frank Lloyd Wright are near the top of the U.S. list, which would have been awesome if the U.S. hadn't just stopped contributing to UNESCO's budget. Well, I'll keep my eyes out for more opportunities during my travels.

World Heritage Update: Greenwich

I've been to more World Heritage Sites in the UK than any other country. That's a reflection of the fact that I've been the UK more than any other country except the US, and there are a lot of sites in a relatively compact area in the UK. There are 28 in the UK, of which 22 are on the island of Great Britain. Four of those are even located in Greater London, but until this month I had missed out on one, Maritime Greenwich.

View from "Octagon Room" in Observatory

With several hours between my arrival in Paddington Station and when I had to catch a train out of town, I decided to head in to see it.

Ye Olde Telescope

The Tube does not actually go to London, rather something called the "Docklands Light Railway" does. For a visitor, it's like the Tube, but with a different kind of train. Nevertheless, when I got to the transfer point at the Tower of London, I was overcome by a desire to approach Greenwich by boat, so I transferred to the Thames Clipper service instead. It cost me a bit of time, but it seemed appropriate.

Once I got to Greenwich, I had time for essentially only one attraction before things closed and I needed to head back to catch my train. I chose the Royal Observatory, and it turned out to be an excellent choice.

The Royal Observatory was founded in order to solve the problem of calculating longitude from a ship, and the Observatory now has an excellent exhibit with a very nice audio guide that tells the story. Despite the fact that the more obvious way to calculate longitude was to have accurate star charts (hence the founding of an observatory), the problem was also solved by John Harrison, a clockmaker who was able to build a more accurate chronometer than anyone had previously been able to carry on a ship. (Pendulums don't work too well at sea.) The story is fascinating, but I won't re-tell it here. (There's a book called Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time from last year on the subject.) But it's pretty interesting to see how an observatory got to be the keeper of the world's standard time.





So that's 50 World Heritage Sites I've visited (more than one-quarter in the UK!), and the last one in London. I'm back up to 5.3%. There are only 3 sites in the southern part of Great Britain that I haven't visited -- Canterbury (a couple of hours from Cambridge, which I may visit next year), Dorset (a couple of hours from where I usually am in the UK), and Cornwall (the very southwestern tip of England). So I'm going to have to start diversifying. I have a chance to be near four sites in the first week in December, but even if I am, it would take a lot of doing to visit them all in what would be a very busy week. We'll see.

World Heritage Update: Belfries!

I was combing the list of World Heritage Sites in the hopes I had overlooked one I had already visited. Lo and behold, I found "Belfries of Belgium and France". Going back over ten years in this blog, I find an "Images of Brugge" entry that contains a couple of pictures I took from "the Belfort" -- Brugge's (Bruges') belfry, one of the ones on the list. My father actually framed prints of those two pictures, so I've had evidence of this visit hanging in our house for more than a decade.

My total is now at 49. Twenty-five sites were inscribed last month, so the total is 936, and my percentage has actually dipped (due to rounding) to 5.2%. Could have been worse -- without this finding, I would have been down to 5.1%.

World Heritage Update: Rideau Canal

This week, I had the opportunity to visit the Rideau Canal in Ottawa. It is one of the best-preserved 19th-century North American canals, built partially as a defense should the US block the St. Lawrence Seaway.

This is my 48th World Heritage Site visited, so I'm up to 5.3% briefly before more are inscribed later this month. Since I've visited none of the candidates, that will drop my percentage back down again.

I was in Ottawa 15 years ago, but I don't remember making it to the canal. If I come across the pictures that prove otherwise, I'll update my World Heritage page to reflect the visit.