Germany: Nebra Sky Disc - Memory of the World

The Nebra Sky Disc features the oldest concrete depiction of cosmic phenomena worldwide. It was ritually buried along with two precious swords, two axes, two spiral arm-rings and one bronze chisel circa 3,600 years ago on the Mittelberg near Nebra (Saxony-Anhalt, Germany) and dedicated to the gods. The bronze disc is considered to be one of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th century. It combines an extraordinary comprehension of astronomical phenomena with the religious beliefs of its period, that enable unique glimpses into the early knowledge of the heavens.

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India: Maratha Military Landscapes of India

The property includes twelve major fortifications, mostly in Maharashtra State, with one in Tamil Nadu. These forts, such as Raigad, Shivneri, and Sindhudurg, were built, adapted, or expanded by the Marathas between the late 17th and early 19th centuries. Strategically located on coastal and mountainous terrain, they formed a complex defence system supporting Maratha military dominance, trade protection, and territorial control. This network played a key role in the Marathas’ rise as a major political and military force.

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Ethiopia: Aksum

The ruins of the ancient city of Aksum are found close to Ethiopia's northern border. They mark the location of the heart of ancient Ethiopia, when the Kingdom of Aksum was the most powerful state between the Eastern Roman Empire and Persia. The massive ruins, dating from between the 1st and the 13th century A.D., include monolithic obelisks, giant stelae, royal tombs and the ruins of ancient castles. Long after its political decline in the 10th century, Ethiopian emperors continued to be crowned in Aksum.

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South Korea: Taekkyeon, a traditional Korean martial art - Intangible Cultural Heritage

Taekkyeon is a traditional Korean martial art that makes use of fluid, rhythmic dance-like movements to strike or trip up an opponent. The graceful movements of a well-trained Taekkyeon performer are gentle and circular rather than straight and rigid, but can explode with enormous flexibility and strength. The feet play as important a role as the hands. In spite of its gentle impression, Taekkyeon is an effective martial art highlighting a broad variety of offensive and defensive skills employing all available fighting methods. It also teaches consideration: a skilled Taekkyeon practitioner can rapidly dominate an opponent, but a true master knows how to make an opponent withdraw without incurring damage. As a part of seasonal farming-related traditions, Taekkyeon serves to facilitate community integration, and as a sport accessible to all plays a major role in promoting public health. Taekkyeon is also practised by a great number of people as a daily activity. There are approximately fifty recognized practitioners of Taekkyeon at present, and the Korean Taekkyeon Association plays a significant role in the transmission and promotion of this traditional martial art.

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Italy: Genoa: Le Strade Nuove and the system of the Palazzi dei Rolli

The Strade Nuove and the system of the Palazzi dei Rolli in Genoa’s historic centre date from the late 16th and early 17th centuries when the Republic of Genoa was at the height of its financial and seafaring power. The site represents the first example in Europe of an urban development project parcelled out by a public authority within a unitary framework and associated to a particular system of ‘public lodging’ in private residences, as decreed by the Senate in 1576. The site includes an ensemble of Renaissance and Baroque palaces along the so-called ‘new streets’ (Strade Nuove). The Palazzi dei Rolli offer an extraordinary variety of different solutions, achieving universal value in adapting to the particular characteristics of the site and to the requirements of a specific social and economic organization. They also offer an original example of a public network of private residences designated to host state visits.

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Uzbekistan: Historic Centre of Bukhara

Bukhara, which is situated on the Silk Route, is more than 2,000 years old. It is the most complete example of a medieval city in Central Asia, with an urban fabric that has remained largely intact. Monuments of particular interest include the famous tomb of Ismail Samani, a masterpiece of 10th-century Muslim architecture, and a large number of 17th-century madrasas.

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Chor Minor

Turkey: Mevlevi Sema ceremony

The Mevleviye is an ascetic Sufi order founded in 1273 in Konya, from where it gradually spread throughout the Ottoman Empire. Today, the Mevleviye can be found in many Turkish communities throughout the world, but the most active and famous centres of the order’s activity are in Konya and Istanbul.

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Austria: The Great Spa Towns of Europe

This transnational serial property comprises eleven spa towns, located in seven European countries: Baden bei Wien (Austria); Spa (Belgium); Františkovy Lázně; Karlovy Vary; Mariánské Lázně (Czechia); Vichy (France); Bad Ems; Baden-Baden; Bad Kissingen (Germany); Montecatini Terme (Italy); and City of Bath (United Kingdom). All of these towns developed around natural mineral water springs. They bear witness to the international European spa culture that developed from the early 18th century to the 1930s, leading to the emergence of grand international resorts that impacted urban typology around ensembles of spa buildings such as baths, kurhaus and kursaal (buildings and rooms dedicated to therapy), pump rooms, drinking halls, colonnades and galleries designed to harness the natural mineral water resources and to allow their practical use for bathing and drinking. Related facilities include gardens, assembly rooms, casinos, theatres, hotels and villas, as well as spa-specific support infrastructure. These ensembles are all integrated into an overall urban context that includes a carefully managed recreational and therapeutic environment in a picturesque landscape. Together, these sites embody the significant interchange of human values and developments in medicine, science and balneology.

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United Kingdom: The Flow Country

The serial property, located in the Highland Region of Scotland, is considered the most outstanding example of an actively accumulating blanket bog landscape. This peatland ecosystem, which has been accumulating for the past 9,000 years, provides a diversity of habitats home to a distinct combination of bird species and displays a remarkable diversity of features not found anywhere else on Earth. Peatlands play an important role in storing carbon and the property’s ongoing peat-forming ecological processes continue to sequester carbon on a very large scale, representing a significant research and educational resource.

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New Zealand: Sub-Antarctic Islands

The New Zealand Sub-Antarctic Islands consist of five island groups (the Snares, Bounty Islands, Antipodes Islands, Auckland Islands and Campbell Island) in the Southern Ocean south-east of New Zealand. The islands, lying between the Antarctic and Subtropical Convergences and the seas, have a high level of productivity, biodiversity, wildlife population densities and endemism among birds, plants and invertebrates. They are particularly notable for the large number and diversity of pelagic seabirds and penguins that nest there. There are 126 bird species in total, including 40 seabirds of which eight breed nowhere else in the world.

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Mexico: Archaeological Monuments Zone of Xochicalco

Xochicalco is an exceptionally well-preserved example of a fortified political, religious and commercial centre from the troubled period of 650–900 that followed the break-up of the great Mesoamerican states such as Teotihuacan, Monte Albán, Palenque and Tikal.

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Brazil: Peruaçu River Canyon

Located in northern Minas Gerais and featuring dramatic karst landscapes, vast caves, and rich biodiversity, the park’s horizontal cave systems, formed in carbonate rock, reveal striking speleothems, collapsed dolines, limestone arches, and underground rivers. Developed in the stable São Francisco craton, the landscape reflects major climatic and geological changes from the Plio-Pleistocene. The park lies at the intersection of the Cerrado, Caatinga, and Atlantic Forest biomes, supporting over 2,000 plant and animal species, including many threatened ones.

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Romania: Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe

This transnational property includes 93 component parts in 18 countries. Since the end of the last Ice Age, European Beech spread from a few isolated refuge areas in the Alps, Carpathians, Dinarides, Mediterranean and Pyrenees over a short period of a few thousand years in a process that is still ongoing. The successful expansion across a whole continent is related to the tree’s adaptability and tolerance of different climatic, geographical and physical conditions.

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Spain: Archaeological Site of Atapuerca

The caves of the Sierra de Atapuerca contain a rich fossil record of the earliest human beings in Europe, from nearly one million years ago and extending up to the Common Era. They represent an exceptional reserve of data, the scientific study of which provides priceless information about the appearance and the way of life of these remote human ancestors.

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Korea: Namhansanseong

Namhansanseong was designed as an emergency capital for the Joseon dynasty (1392–1910), in a mountainous site 25 km south-east of Seoul. Built and defended by Buddhist monk-soldiers, it could accommodate 4,000 people and fulfilled important administrative and military functions. Its earliest remains date from the 7th century, but it was rebuilt several times, notably in the early 17th century in anticipation of an attack from the Sino-Manchu Qing dynasty. The city embodies a synthesis of the defensive military engineering concepts of the period, based on Chinese and Japanese influences, and changes in the art of fortification following the introduction from the West of weapons using gunpowder. A city that has always been inhabited, and which was the provincial capital over a long period, it contains evidence of a variety of military, civil and religious buildings and has become a symbol of Korean sovereignty.

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Cuba: Urban Historic Centre of Cienfuegos

The colonial town of Cienfuegos was founded in 1819 in the Spanish territory but was initially settled by immigrants of French origin. It became a trading place for sugar cane, tobacco and coffee. Situated on the Caribbean coast of southern-central Cuba at the heart of the country’s sugar cane, mango, tobacco and coffee production area, the town first developed in the neoclassical style. It later became more eclectic but retained a harmonious overall townscape. Among buildings of particular interest are the Government Palace (City Hall), San Lorenzo School, the Bishopric, the Ferrer Palace, the former lyceum, and some residential houses. Cienfuegos is the first, and an outstanding example of an architectural ensemble representing the new ideas of modernity, hygiene and order in urban planning as developed in Latin America from the 19th century.

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Denmark: Wadden Sea

The Wadden Sea is the largest unbroken system of intertidal sand and mud flats in the world. The site covers the Dutch Wadden Sea Conservation Area, the German Wadden Sea National Parks of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, and most of the Danish Wadden Sea maritime conservation area. It is a large, temperate, relatively flat coastal wetland environment, formed by the intricate interactions between physical and biological factors that have given rise to a multitude of transitional habitats with tidal channels, sandy shoals, sea-grass meadows, mussel beds, sandbars, mudflats, salt marshes, estuaries, beaches and dunes. The area is home to numerous plant and animal species, including marine mammals such as the harbour seal, grey seal and harbour porpoise. Wadden Sea is one of the last remaining large-scale, intertidal ecosystems where natural processes continue to function largely undisturbed.

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Rømø

Malaysia: The Archaeological Heritage of Niah National Park’s Caves Complex

This complex of colossal, interconnected caverns is located near the west coast of Borneo Island at the centre of Niah National Park.  It contains the longest known records of human interaction with rainforest, spanning at least 50,000 years, from the Pleistocene to the Mid-Holocene periods. The rich archaeological deposits, prehistoric rock paintings and boat-shaped burials found at the northern edge of the massif illustrate biological and human life during this time, and contribute greatly to the knowledge of human development, adaptation and migration in southeast Asia, as well as in a global context. Local communities still observe an ancient tradition of molong – ‘take only what you need’— when harvesting guano and valuable edible bird’s nests from the caves.

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Ukraine: Struve Geodetic Arc

The Struve Arc is a chain of survey triangulations stretching from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea, through 10 countries and over 2,820 km. These are points of a survey, carried out between 1816 and 1855 by the astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve, which represented the first accurate measuring of a long segment of a meridian. This helped to establish the exact size and shape of the planet and marked an important step in the development of earth sciences and topographic mapping. It is an extraordinary example of scientific collaboration among scientists from different countries, and of collaboration between monarchs for a scientific cause. The original arc consisted of 258 main triangles with 265 main station points. The listed site includes 34 of the original station points, with different markings, i.e. a drilled hole in rock, iron cross, cairns, or built obelisks.

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China: Xixia Imperial Tombs

Located in the foothills of the southern Helan Mountains in Ningxia, this necropolis is the imperial cemetery of the Xixia Dynasty. It includes nine imperial mausoleums, 271 subordinate tombs, a northern architectural complex, and 32 flood control structures. Founded by the Tanguts in 1038, the Xixia Dynasty lasted until its destruction by Genghis Khan’s Mongol army in 1227. Positioned along the Silk Road, it became a multicultural civilization modelled on Chinese imperial traditions, with Buddhism at its core. The property reflects the dynasty’s religious and socio-political legacy.

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