UNESCO

The World Heritage List of UNESCO is an excellent benchmark for building its stay around cultural discoveries. Today, it contains 1,052 property constituting the cultural and natural heritage that the World Heritage Committee considers to be of exceptional universal value. The list now includes 814 cultural objects, 203 natural and 35 mixed in 165 States parties, that is, that have ratified the World Heritage Convention. The selection criteria from the website are:

Representing a masterpiece of human creative engineering;

To demonstrate a considerable exchange of influences during a given period or in a specific cultural area, on the development of architecture or technology, monumental arts, city planning or landscape creation;

To provide unique or at least exceptional testimony on a cultural tradition or a living or missing civilization;

Provide an eminent example of a type of construction or architectural or technological ensemble or landscape illustrating one or more significant periods of human history;

To be an eminent example of traditional human settlement, traditional use of land or sea, representative of a culture (or cultures) or human interaction with the environment, especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible mutation;

Be directly or materially associated with living events or traditions, ideas, beliefs or artistic and literary works with outstanding universal significance. The Committee considers that this criterion should preferably be used in conjunction with other criteria;

Represent natural phenomena or areas of exceptional beauty and aesthetic importance;

To be eminently representative examples of the major stages of Earth's history, including testimony of life, ongoing geological processes in the development of terrestrial forms or geomorphic or physiographic elements of great significance;

To be eminently representative of ecological and biological processes under way in the evolution and development of ecosystems and communities of terrestrial, aquatic, coastal and marine plants and animals;

Contain the most representative and important natural habitats for in situ conservation of biological diversity, including those where threatened species with outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation survive.

In addition to these criteria, the Selection Committee also considers the protection, management, authenticity and integrity of property.