The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage Committee has added 27 new sites to its heritage list and the latest list features India’s Santhiniketan.
The list also contains places like Iran’s Persian Caravanserai, Indonesia’s Cosmological Axis of Yogyakarta, The Forest Massif of Odzala-Kokoua in Congo, Volcanoes and forests of Mount Pelée and pitons of Martinique, Russia ’ss Astronomical Observatories of Kazan Federal University, The Maison Carrée of Nîmes, France, the Viking-age ring fortresses in Denmark, Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan and the Czech town of Žatec and its tradition of Saaz Hops, among several others.
Furthermore, Santiniketan in West Bengal is not the only location from India to make it to the list, for the country’s Sacred Ensembles of the Hoysalas has also been mentioned.
As for Santiniketan, which is a popular town in the eastern state of the country, it is known as the place where Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore established the Visva-Bharati University over a century ago. While Santiniketan was established in 1901, it was only in 1921, that the ‘world university’ was established there.
The cultural site is in Birbhum district and it served as a residential school and centre for art based on ancient Indian traditions. It was built with the vision of uniting humanity by transcending religious and cultural boundaries that prevail to this day.
To be added to UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list, a natural or cultural site must be of outstanding universal value and meet at least one of the 10 other criteria for selection. It must have “areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance” or be a “masterpiece of human creative genius.”
As for its Endangered List, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee had only recently added several sites in Ukraine like Kyiv’s Saint Sophia Cathedral and Lviv.
Here are some of the new sites added to the list:
Koh Ker archaeological site in Cambodia
Santiniketan, West Bengal, India
Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu’er, China
Mongolia’s Deer Stone Monuments
Korea’s Gaya Tumuli burial mounds
Türkiye’s archaeological site of Gordion
Germany’s Jewish medieval historic center of Erfurt
Architecture of the town of Kaunas, Lithuania
Guatemala’s National Archaeological Park Tak’alik Ab’aj
Old town of Kuldiga, Latvia
Prehistoric Sites of Talayotic Menorca
The Zarafshan-Karakum Corridor of the Silk Road
