World Heritage Day 2015 today

Today (18th April) is World Heritage Day, and there were events and some media coverage all over the world today, including on Twitter.

UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, an agency of the United Nations, and it designates World Heritage Sites. Britain and its dominions have 28 sites on the list of designated World Heritage Sites. Four of these are natural, one is mixed (natural and heritage), and 23 are ‘built cultural heritage’ sites. Britain also has 14 sites on the ‘Tentative’ list: these are sites which have been suggested for nomination to UNESCO. The current British ‘Tentative’ list was compiled in 2011 and the list is usually set for ten years. The nearest World Heritage Sites to Colchester are Canterbury Cathedral in Kent and four sites in London, ie Maritime Greenwich, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey and the Palace of Westminster, and Kew Gardens. Other British World Heritage Sites include Stonehenge, Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall, Bath, and Edinburgh. East Anglia, and even the East of England, look sadly excluded. Come on, the East of England! – how about proposing some sites for Britain’s ‘Tentative’ list?

From the web-site of the United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO: ‘… To become a World Heritage Site, a site must be put forward for nomination by its government and demonstrate that it meets one or more of the ten criteria laid down by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee. These criteria are used to assess the Outstanding Universal Value of a site and identify if the site can be regarded as having made a unique contribution to our shared global heritage. By inscribing a property as a World Heritage Site, the responsibility for preservation and conservation of that site becomes the responsibility of not just the country that holds it, but of the whole world …’ – at www.unesco.org.uk/becoming_a_world_heritage_site .

Incidentally, the Roman circus at Mérida in Spain is part of a group of Roman monuments which are designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, including a theatre, amphitheatre, a bridge, two aqueducts, a Trajan arch, a mithraeum, and a temple. The Roman remains here at Colchester, including the Roman circus, demonstrate the origins of the town within the Roman empire and that we are part of an international network of Roman heritage, even without World Heritage Site status.

See the list of World Heritage Sites in Britain at http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/gb and the criteria for selection at http://whc.unesco.org/en/criteria/ .

[Image to follow.]

.