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WHC
World Heritage
Sites Visited
Alternative
List
Categories
Criteria |
Categories of World Heritage Sites
The Convention defines two basic types or categories of site that are eligible to be nominated for inclusion on the World Heritage List: Cultural sites and Natural Sites. These are defined in the table below. Some sites qualify under both categories, and these are described as mixed sites.
Nominated sites are assessed by the World Hertage Committee against a number of criteria. In effect, these criteria define "outstanding universal value", which is the fundamental qualification for inclusion in the List for the two types of site (the table below illustrates how this expression is the crucial factor in each case).
All of the sites that we have visited so far have been cultural sites (ie buildings, man-made landscapes, archeaological sites etc.). This type of site accounts for the vast majority of sites on the World Heritage List (480 out of a total of 630 sites). To see details of the WHC sites we have visited, go to our Sites Visited List. We have also compiled an Alternative List of other noteworty places we have visited that we think might have a case for inclusion in the list.
More information about the World Heritage Convention, the Committee, and the process of considering sites can be found at the World Heritage Centre (WHC) website. This includes a complete and up-to-date list of World Heritage Sites, with descriptions, pictures, and links to relevant websites.
| Two Types of World Heritage Site |
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Cultural sites |
Natural sites |
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Cultural properties are defined in Article 1 of the Convention as:
- Monuments: architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, cave dwellings and combinations of features, which are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science;
- Groups of buildings: groups of separate or connected buildings which, because of their architecture, their homogeneity or their place in the landscape, are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science;
- Sites: works of man or the combined works of nature and of man, and areas including archaeological sites which are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological points of view.
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Natural properties are defined in Article 2 of the Convention as:
- Natural features consisting of physical and biological formations or groups of such formations, which are of outstanding universal value from the aesthetic or scientific point of view;
- Geological and physiographical formations and precisely delineated areas which constitute the habitat of threatened species of animals and plants of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation;
- Natural sites or precisely delineated natural areas of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science, conservation or natural beauty.
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