The World Heritage Committee has inscribed 721 properties on the World Heritage List (554 cultural, 144 natural and 23 mixed in 124 States Parties). The List, arranged alphabetically by nominating State Party, is current as of December 2001. The list will be updated following the next meeting of the Committee in June 2002. The complete list is at UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site

Spain's Eight Cities

They May Be UNESCO's Best Single Ensemble of World Heritage Cities

Here is an “eight-fer” of World Heritage Cities that could lead cultured travelers to one of the most delightful vacations of their lives.

As UNESCO has broadened and refined its World Heritage Site concept over the past 29 years, many cities have joined its elite list of places considered so culturally or historically important that they belong to all of humanity, not just one nation.

World Heritage Cities are now found on all the continents, except Australia and Antarctica. They range from the ancient, such as China’s Ping Yao and England’s Bath, to the medieval, such as Kyoto, Japan, Bagerhat, Bangladesh and Timbuktu, Mali, to the fairly modern (within the past 500 years), such as Quebec City, Canada and Machu Picchu, Peru. (Cities noted in bold have been covered previously by this newsletter. Visit our Archives to see those articles.)

Some countries, like Brazil, with six, and Italy, with 11, have a large number of World Heritage Cities or city centers – testaments to the great tides of history and art that have passed through some lands.

A Moorish façade, centuries old, glows in Córdoba’s light.

But perhaps the greatest collection of World Heritage Cities, possibly in grandeur and certainly in concept, is the “Spanish Collection of World Heritage Cities” which includes Ávila, Cáceres, Córdoba, Cuenca, Salamanca, Santiago de Compostela, Segovia and Toledo. The “collection” is the creation of the Association of World Heritage Cities of Spain, a group that began meeting in 1993 to undertake a united, cohesive marketing effort that would encourage travelers to treat the then six cities as an ensemble (Córdoba joined the group in 1994; Cuenca in 1998).

Spain, which is about 25% larger than California, is conveniently box-shaped, so the distances between any of its cities does not make for an exhausting or time-consuming journey. As the map here shows, six of the cities are arranged in a rough triangle and are no more than one day’s leisurely drive from one to another.

The two further cities, Santiago de Compostela and Córdoba, in and of themselves are so important historically that their relative remoteness should make no difference to the earnest traveler. Santiago was one of Christendom’s three greatest pilgrimage sites during the Middle Ages, while Córdoba, Spain’s greatest center of Moorish culture, boasted Europe’s preeminent university in the early Middle Ages.

Taken as an ensemble, the cities are as magnificent an introduction to Spain’s complex history as any discerning traveler could hope for.

The Association has built a wonderful web site that goes far more deeply into the distinct character and history of each of the “collection’s” eight cities than we can do here: World Heritage Cities of Spain  Each entry is thorough in providing ample illustrations and descriptions that establish a city’s importance.

The site also has a wonderful series of links that can take the curious anywhere from more information on the World Heritage Site concept to a list of Spain’s famous paradores, old castles and convents converted into hotels.

A bonus: Although the English-language version has been written by authors who are familiar with the language, they’re not so familiar with it that they don’t sometimes devise some very charming, unexpected, smile-inducing turns of phrase. — Patrick Totty