News

The Weimar Jena Akademie in partnership with the Bauhaus Universität Weimar and co-financed by the European Union, is organizing its 10th edition of the Weimar Summer Courses. The Weimar Summer Courses will offer around 80 participants from different countries a two week program of diverse activities in small work groups which will include seminars, lectures, workshops and discussion ...

The World Heritage Committee has welcomed the success of the authorities of Azerbaijan in preserving the Walled City of Baku with the Shirvanshahs' Palace and Maiden Tower (Azerbaijan), and decided to remove the property from UNESCO's List of World Heritage in Danger. The site, which sustained damage during the earthquake of November 2000, was inscribed on the Danger List in 2003. The site ...

"Every time we fail to preserve a site, we share the pain of the State Party," declared María Jesús San Segundo, the Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of Spain to UNESCO who is chairing the 33rd session of the World Heritage Committee presently underway in Seville on Thursday. The World Heritage Committee decided to remove Germany's Dresden Elbe Valley from UNESCO's World Heritage List due ...

The 33rd session of the World Heritage Committee, chaired by María Jesús San Segundo, the Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of Spain to UNESCO, opened today in Seville, Spain. During the session, which ends on June 30, the Committee´s 21 members will review the state of conservation of properties inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List and 27 nominations for new ...

José Maria and José, founders of the ICE CARE project, left UNESCO Headquaters in Paris this morning following a meeting with Mr Kishore Rao, Deputy Director of the World Heritage Centre, to begin their 4 year project at five of the World Heritage Glaciers. The purpose of the expeditions will be to raise awareness about the threats to these melting ice caps. It is upon reading ...

Spain, host of the 33rd session of the World Heritage Committee, is organizing the first Ibero-American World Heritage Youth Forum. Participants will be young people between 12 and 15 years old who attend in their country of origin a secondary school affiliated with the UNESCO ASPnet Schools Network, and who are acquainted with the World Heritage in Young Hands programme. During the week-long ...

On 12 June 2009, the Director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Francesco Bandarin and the Director-General of the Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA),  Halit Eren signed a cooperation agreement in Istanbul, Turkey, within the framework of the UNESCO-IRCICA Mou signed in 2005 by the Heads of the two Organizations. The World Heritage Centre and IRCICA have ...

The Honorable Jim Prentice, Canada's Canada's Environment Minister and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, has introduced a bill which resulted in an important expansion of the Nahanni National Park Reserve of Canada. This followed a commitment made in 2009 by the Government of Canada. Through this proposed law, the Nahanni area is six times larger, making this 3000-km² park the third ...

On 21 and 22 May 2009, the Director-General of UNESCO, Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, visited four World Heritage Sites in northern Portugal. He was accompanied throughout his trip by the President of the Portuguese National Commission to UNESCO, Ambassador Fernando Andresen Guimarães. The Director-General's first visit was to the Prehistoric Rock-Art Sites in the Côa Valley , ...

On 28 May, after a visit to UNESCO's Director-General, UNESCO Artist for Peace Missa Johnouchi met with Mr Francesco Bandarin, Director of the World Heritage Centre. Ms Johnouchi was in Paris to record three new songs with the French National Orchestra for her next album. The album will be released in Japan in autumn 2009 and is conceived by Ms Johnouchi, with the support of UNESCO, as a ...

UNESCO's Director-General, Koïchiro Matsuura, and the President of the Republic of Chile, Michelle Bachelet Jeria, presented today in Paris a joint training project for development and sustainable ecotourism, aimed at local communities in the Rapa Nui National Park, a site inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1995. To launch the project, financed by the Government of Japan, a ...

The World Heritage Committee will consider requests for the inscription of new sites on UNESCO's World Heritage List when it meets for its 33rd session in Seville, Spain, from 22 to 30 June. During this year's session - to be chaired by María Jesús San Segundo, the Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of Spain to UNESCO - 35 States Parties to the World Heritage Convention will ...

The World Heritage Centre wishes to pay tribute to Michel Parent, a leading personality of world cultural heritage, who passed away last week at the age of ninety-three. Born in 1916 in Neuilly sur Seine, France, Michel Parent was a highly active and creative man. During his impressive career, he successively became Inspector (1945) and Inspector General (1958) of Sites, Inspector General ...

The first World Heritage sites to participate in the Earthwatch "Business Skills for World Heritage" programme were selected today. A total of 9 site managers from Ujung Kulon National Park (Indonesia), Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park (Philippines) and Kinabalu Park (Malaysia) will join two Earthwatch training professionals and three Shell company business planning experts on ...

The master's degree course "World Heritage at Work", offered by the University of Turin and the Polytechnic of Turin and organized by the International Training Centre of ILO in collaboration with the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, is preparing for its second year. The programme is intended for professionals involved in the management of a World Heritage property and those who are associated ...

As part of a commitment to sharing its expertise, the US National Park Service (NPS) is offering training opportunities to qualified candidates who wish to learn from the US experience in managing and protecting World Heritage Sites.  All expenses paid extended residencies in US parks designated as World Heritage Sites will be available to site managers and staff of World Heritage Sites ...

On 23 April 2009, the Director-General of UNESCO, Mr Koïchiro Matsuura inaugurated an exhibition at UNESCO Headquarters celebrating the successful reinstallation of the Aksum Obelisk in Ethiopia. Entitled 'Aksum Rediscovered: The Reinstallation of the Aksum Obelisk', the exhibition features films and photographs documenting key moments of the re-installation built around a structure ...

With the financial support of the World Heritage Fund, as well as national organizers of India, the final of a series of "Itinerant Workshops on the Conservation and Management of Persian, Timurid and Mughal Architecture", has successfully taken place in Delhi and Agra, from 6 to 12 April 2009 in India. It was jointly organized by the World Heritage Centre, the Archaeological Survey of India ...

An exhibition - photographs and a video installation - at UNESCO will celebrate the reinstallation of the Aksum obelisk. The show will give visitors a chance to learn about the history of the Ethiopian site and to view the key stages of reinstalling the monument, 24 metres high and weighing 150 tons. Open to the public from 4 to 15 May (9 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.), the exhibition will be ...

The World Heritage Centre has noted with great concern the news of the earthquake that struck near L'Aquila, Central Italy, on Monday, 6 April 2009. According to initial reports, some 60 miles west of the epicentre of the quake, the Baths of Caracalla (part of the UNESCO World Heritage property "Historic Centre of Rome, the Properties of the Holy See in that City Enjoying Extraterritorial ...