Ukraine eyes UNESCO World Heritage tag for abandoned plant and wasteland Ukrainian nuclear agency worker Viktor Kozlov received an unusual birthday gift from his wife Maryna: tickets for a 90 minute flight over Chernobyl, site of the world's worst nuclear disaster. The trip gives passengers a bird's eye view of the abandoned buildings in the ghost town of Pripyat that once housed nuclear workers, and the massive domed structure now covering the reactor that exploded on April 26, 1986. On the flight, run by Ukraine International Airlines, passengers craned their necks, pointed and took pictures on their phones of the site that has become one of the country's major tourist destinations. An aerial view from a plane shows a New Safe Confinement (NSC) structure over the old sarcoph...
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A UNESCO World Heritage site in Poland is being used to help people recover from COVID-19, with patients going deep underground in the Wieliczka salt mine to a therapeutic centre dealing with respiratory illness. Famous for its ornate underground chapels carved from salt, the Wieliczka mine, located just outside the southern city of Krakow, is one of Poland’s biggest tourist attractions, drawing around 1.8 million visitors in 2019. But doctors say the micro-climate in the mine, which stretches as far as 327 metres underground, also helps people with pulmunory problems. Magdalena Kostrzon, a doctor working at the mine, told Reuters that patients with respiratory illnesses have been coming there since the 19th century. “The underground micro-climate is, above all, characteri...
Read MoreThe shared values and close ties between tourism and culture stakeholders means both sectors can work together to ensure inclusive access to heritage, as countries around the world recover from the pandemic. In recognition of this mutually reinforcing relationship, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and UNESCO have collaborated to produce a set of new guidelines focusing on the responsible restart of cultural tourism. UNWTO invited the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to contribute to the UNWTO Inclusive Recovery Guide, Issue 2: Cultural Tourism. This is the second set of guidelines relating to the socio-cultural impacts of COVID-19 issued by UNWTO and will continue to be revised, as the situation evolves. Make cultural tourism relevant The pu...
Read MoreArchaeologists in Pompeii, the city buried in a volcanic eruption in 79 AD, have made the extraordinary find of a frescoed hot food and drinks shop that served up the ancient equivalent of street food to Roman passersby. Known as a termopolium, Latin for hot drinks counter, the shop was discovered in the archaeological park’s Regio V site, which is not yet open the public, and unveiled on Saturday. Frescoes on an ancient counter discovered during excavations in Pompeii, Italy, are seen in this handout picture released December 26, 2020. Pompeii Archaeological Park/Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism/Luigi Spina/Handout via REUTERS Traces of nearly 2,000-year-old food were found in some of the deep terra cotta jars containing hot food which the shop keeper low...
Read MoreSingapore’s tradition of communal dining at hawker centres, open air food courts popularised by celebrity chefs and hit films such as ‘Crazy Rich Asians’, has been recognised by UNESCO for its cultural significance. The United Nations’ cultural agency announced late Wednesday it had added the city-state’s “hawker culture” to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, nearly two years after Singapore submitted a bid to be included in the list. FILE PHOTO: Hawker Leong Yuet Meng, 90, of Nam Seng Noodle House, presents a bowl of wonton noodle soup at her shop in Singapore. REUTERS/Edgar Su Singapore’s hawker centres were set up to house former street vendors, or “hawkers” in an effort to clean up the island in the 1970s and serve a variety of cheap, no-...
Read MoreResidents of a coastal township on Australia’s World Heritage-listed Fraser Island were told to evacuate on Sunday as a bushfire approached. Since it was sparked by an illegal campfire seven weeks ago, the blaze has blackened half the island off Australia’s north eastern coast, which is part of the Great Barrier Reef and famed for its tropical rainforest on sand dunes, and inland lakes. Residents of Happy Valley had a small reprieve after the blaze lessened in intensity on Sunday afternoon, Queensland state emergency services commissioner Greg Leach told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Aerial view of an area affected by a bushfire on Fraser Island (K'gari), Queensland, Australia December 5, 2020 in this picture obtained from social media. Save Fraser Islands Dingoes Inc ...
Read MoreIndia's iconic Western Ghats, inscribed by UNESCO in 2012 as a natural world heritage site, is threatened by population pressure, urbanisation and climate change, according to a new report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The IUCN World Heritage Outlook 3, published last week, builds on previous reports from 2014 and 2017 to track whether the conservation of the world’s 252 natural world heritage sites is sufficient to protect them in the long term. According to the 2020 report, the conservation outlook of the mountain chain of the Western Ghats, one of the worlds eight hottest hot spots of biological diversity, is of significant concern. If a sites conservation outlook is of significant concern, its values are considered to be threatened by a num...
Read Moreदुनिया के सैलानियों में कंबोडिया के अंगकोर वाट के मंदिरों की लोकप्रियता ठीक उसी तरह की है जैसे हमारे यहां स्थित ताजमहल की! यदि आप दक्षिण पूर्व एशिया के देशों में भ्रमण का मन बना रहे हों तो अपने यात्रा कार्यक्रम में कंबोडिया को अवश्य शामिल करें क्योंकि यहां एक ऐसी वास्तुशिल्पीय जादूनगरी है जिसका भव्य रूप आपको बार-बार रोमांचित करता रहेगा। यह जादूनगरी है अंगकोर वाट। कंबोडिया के सियमरीप शहर से करीब 5.5 किलोमीटर दूर स्थित अंगकोर वाट दुनिया का सबसे बड़ा धार्मिक परिसर माना जाता है। यह खमेर स्थापत्य कला और वास्तुशिल्प का बेजोड़ नमूना होने के साथ-साथ कंबोडियाई लोगों का गौरवशाली प्रतीक भी है और कंबोडिया के राष्ट्रीय ध्वज पर इसकी छवि अंकित है। प्राचीन कलाकारों ने अपनी कला-प्रतिभा की अभिव्यक्ति के लिए मंदिरो,मस्जिदों और गिरजाघरों को माध्यम बनाया था। पाषाण, ईंटों और चूना पत्थर से खड़े किए गए कई स्म...
Read Moreयूं तो समूचा तुर्की अपने अद्भुत नजारों के लिए देखने लायक है, लेकिन उन नजारों में भी कैपाडोकिया की अपनी अनूठी जगह है। दरअसल केवल तुर्की ही नहीं, पूरी दुनिया में यह नजारा और कहीं देखने को न मिलेगा। इसे प्रकृति की रची गई एक कविता भी कहा जा सकता है। देखने में यहां की धरती ठीक वैसी लगती है जैसे कि चांद की सतह के बारे में हम जानते हैं पहाड़ी टीले, घाटियां, गुफाएं। आकाश से देखेंगे तो लगेगा मानो चांद का कोई टुकड़ा काटकर तुर्की में रख दिया गया हो। अब यह प्रकृति, इतिहास और इंसान की मिली-जुली कलाकृति है। इसीलिए 1986 में यूनेस्को ने इसे विश्व विरासत का दर्जा दे दिया था। कैपाडोकिया की गहरी खाइयां और घाटियां प्राकृतिक आश्चर्य तो हैं ही, लगभग दो हजार सालों से लोगों का बसेरा भी बनी हुई हैं। इस अद्भुत इलाके में सन 60 ईस्वी में पहली ईसाई बस्तियां बसी थीं। लिहाजा सदियों पुराने चर्च और उस जमाने की चित...
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