At the 41st session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, ending today in Krakow, 18 cultural sites were added to the list. The boundaries of two more objects already on the list have been significantly adjusted.
Among the new objects is Sviyazhsk in Tatarstan, which
has long been preparing for the status of a World Heritage Site. Officially on the UNESCO list, it appears as "Cathedral and Monastery of the Assumption in the island city of Sviyazhsk."
It was also known in advance that the capital of Eritrea, Asmara (Asmara), would receive the desired status: this city has been ruled by the Italian colonial authorities since the end of the 19th century, and is famous for the unique buildings of the Mussolini era, mainly in the 1930s. These buildings combine elements of art deco, rationalism and futurism, and the original interiors are often preserved in public buildings.
The list includes the historical centers of Indian Ahmedabad, Hebron on the West Bank of the Jordan River (at the same time it was included in the list of objects in danger) and Yazda in Iran, the ancient Greek colony of Aphrodisia in modern Turkey, the Chinese island of Gulanyu - a former international settlement of the late 19th - first half of the 20th century with a set of endemic styles - a mixture of Eastern and Western traditions and directions, the Japanese island of Okinoshima is a shrine of Shintoism, where, despite the rules of UNESCO, public access is prohibited, the Sambor Prei Kuk temples in Cambodia (presumably the ancient city of Ishanapura), the Venetian fortress republics in Italy, Croatia and Montenegro (Palmanova, Zadar, Fortika on the island of Hvar and others).
The Lake District in the North West of England is listed as a cultural site due to the fact that this remarkable natural landscape here is complemented by centuries of agricultural activity, the construction of country residences, the creation of gardens and parks. It also takes into account the influence of this area on artists, poets, writers since the 18th century, and its role in shaping the concept of the value and preservation of natural landscapes.
During the Krakow session, caves and monuments of art from the last Ice Age in the Swabian Alps also became World Heritage Sites, Kuyataa - a subarctic agricultural landscape in southern Greenland that has developed since the 18th century, Mbanza Congo, the former capital of the Kingdom of Congo (now within the borders of Angola), a sanctuary -Marae Taputapuatea on the Society Islands in French Polynesia, historic mines with a pumping system in Tarnowskie Góry in Upper Silesia (Poland), the Homani cultural landscape inhabited since the Paleolithic in South Africa. In addition, the list includes the archaeological remains of the Valongu pier in the center of Rio de Janeiro, where ships with African slaves were unloaded: since 1811, about 900,000 slaves arrived in South America through this pier.
The historic center of Vienna (UNESCO monument since 2001) has been included in the list of heritage sites in danger due to high-rise construction. In particular, the appearance of the urban landscape can be disturbed by the Vienna Ice-Skating Club / InterContinental Hotel / Vienna Konzerthaus complex designed by the Brazilian architect Isai Weinfeld. Gelati Monastery in Georgia, on the other hand, was removed from the list of endangered sites.
In addition, the list of monuments in the object "Bauhaus and its monuments in Weimar and Dessau" has been expanded (in particular, the Hannes Meyer school of trade unions in Bernau has been added, and Bernau is now mentioned in the name of the object), and the Neustadt district was added to the protected area in Strasbourg, which appeared during the period of German possession of the city (1871-1918).
