Travel
UNESCO’s newly inscribed World Heritage Sites include these often-unsung historic places and natural beauties across Europe.
ByRory Goulding
Published October 20, 2023
• 6 min read
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
UNESCO has added 42 World Heritage Sites to its list of the planet’s natural and cultural sights worth special protection — the biggest group of new entries in more than two decades. The European listings alone span the mighty and the minute, from a gorge-carved landscape in Greece to a charmingly vintage planetarium in the Netherlands.
1. Kaunas and Kuldīga, Latvia
Best for: offbeat city breaks
With a four-hour drive, it’s possible to combine two new heritage sites in the Baltic states. Kaunas is Lithuania’s second city and served as its temporary capital in the 1920s and 1930s. Though it has plenty of architecture from earlier periods, the listing honours its interwar modernist style. In Latvia, Kuldīga is a unique example of a traditional urban settlement, with painted wooden buildings on cobbled streets, with the Venta River running through it.
2. Zagorochoria, Greece
Best for: hiking
In the forested north west of Greece, near the border with Albania, Zagori is a region of stern mountain ramparts carved by the gigantic Vikos Gorge, with some 46 villages dotted around the slopes. These traditional settlements, the Zagorochoria, are linked by hiking trails, many of which cross graceful, centuries-old arched stone bridges above the highland torrents. Other routes head up to a plateau marked by isolated pools, including Drakolimni (Dragon Lake).
3. First World War memorials, Belgium and France
Best for: contemplation
Recognising recognition itself, the listing of First World War memorials takes in the entire Western Front across Belgium and northern France. The conflict changed the way people commemorated loss, from the ossuary of 130,000 unknown soldiers — both French and German — at Douaumont near Verdun to the sorrowful beauty of Canada’s Vimy Memorial, with its twin limestone spires.
4. Eisinga Planetarium, the Netherlands
Best for: astronomers
Like many other towns across the Netherlands, Franeker, in the province of Friesland, lines its canals with gabled brick houses. One of those conceals something unexpected: the Eisinga Planetarium. Completed in 1781, it’s the world’s oldest working orrery (model of the solar system), with golden orbs suspended under sky-blue ceiling panels painted with celestial orbits.
5. Maison Carrée, France
Best for: classic good looks
In the southern French city of Nîmes, the Maison Carrée (‘Square House’) is blandly named, but is quite possibly the best-preserved Roman temple in the world. With its graceful Corinthian columns and classical proportions, it’s been an inspiration to architects for more than 2,000 years. Nîmes has other impressive Roman relics, too, including an amphitheatre three-quarters of the size of the Colosseum in Rome.
(Menorca’s ‘houses of the dead’ reveal these ancient secrets.)
6. Žatec, Czech Republic
Best for: beer-drinkers
Žatec is an attractive Czech town of baroque squares north west of Prague. Its surrounding fields provide two-thirds of the hops used in the world’s most beer-loving country. Gain a deeper appreciation of the historic Saaz hops variety at the Hop and Beer Temple, an interactive museum with a tower looking out over rooftops and old kiln chimneys.
7. Caves of Northern Apennines, Italy
Best for: cave explorers
Gesso, the Italian word for the mineral gypsum, appears in place names across the Northern Apennines range, such as the Vena del Gesso hills with their ‘vein’ of white outcrops. A series of sites in the Emilia-Romagna region protects both above-ground features and geologically important caves beneath. Some can be explored on group tours, including the stalactite-rich Onferno Caves near Rimini.
Find the full list of new UNESCO World Heritage Sites online.
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