Given his background as a civil servant in Assam, I'd love to see Majuli getting nominated again before 2015 - and him fighting for it.

Have you heard a Thai delegate? He supported Coimbra and Portugal because it was Portuguese who brought chilli from South America to Thailand, and that's the beginning of Thai Food!

I'm going to guess that UNESCO isn't going to update their map for a while (they still haven't done last years additions).

As such here is a map file with this years additions:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5USQTr0FQ5CNVQ4dTNYWFlxX1U/edit?usp=sharing

It will initially display as a Google map but there should be an arrow pointing down in the top left hand corner, if you click on that you can download it for Google Earth.

I've tried to include the relevant information, and most of the natural sites come with their boundaries (Lesotho and Mt Kenya extensions don't as the excellent protectedplanet.neteither doesn't have the data or is having trouble displaying it. Xinjiang Tianshain also is a little non specific.).

All these come with the caveat that they are non official and at times are best guesses, but most of the cultural sites should be pretty accurate.

If I find time I will do 2012's additions as well soon.

Hope they are useful, if you have any issues give me a shout.

mwf

Hi meltwaterfalls,

thank you very much, this is really a great tool!

There is one thing I wonder about: Why do you have 16 locations of Medici villas and gardens while on the official homepage of the UNESCO only 12 are listed? Also the "Palais de Seravezza" seems to be missing in your version.

Thanks again and I hope you will find the time to do the 2012's additions as well soon... waiting for the UNESCO to do it is very tiring.

Best regards
Jonas

oh, that indicates that Italy amended the inscription from the tentative proposal. I just copied across the data assuming it was the same. I will have to have a look a little later when I get a chance.

Yep hopefully I should be able to get 2012 done soon.

It seems that some of the natural sites are smaller than the area shown by protectedplanet. I've just checked Namib and Mount Etna in the IUCN evaluation file, which includes more or less detailed maps.

http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2013/whc13-37com-8B2inf-en.pdf

Probably protectedplanet - which is indeed a wonderful tool - provides boundaries of the respective nature park or biosphere reserve whereas the WHS area is smaller. It's a clever strategy to nominate only a part of a nature park and take the entire park as buffer zone.

Last year it took a few months until UNESCO provides the documents of the new sites, but UNEP-WCMC was rather fast. The kml-file with the boundaries of all natural and mixed sites was updated in August 2012.

http://www.worldheritagesite.org/forums/index.php?action=vthread&forum=9&topic=1617#m sg4925



As far as I know the Medici Villa site includes 12 villa and 2 gardens. However most of them are in private ownership and not accessible. Descriptions and links to individual websites are given on the link from Assif:

http://www.worldheritagesite.org/forums/index.php?action=vthread&forum=3&topic=1653&p age=9#msg7385

Right I have updated the Medici Villas

The file is now here {note the original post has changed as well, in case you had a link that has now gone dead}

As Hubert has said, There are 14 locations that make up the Medici Villas; 12 Villas and 2 Gardens. Though the UNESCO website only lists 12 locations (An educated guess shows that it is misses Villa Poggio Imperiale and Villa Artimino)

These are the Villas that were on the T-list but didn't get listed:
Villa Medici Camugliano
Villa Medici Capraia Fiorentina
Villa Demidoff: Now inscribed for its garden Pratolino
Villa Medici Mezzomonte
Villa Medici Lappeggi
Villa Medici Belvedere (fort) - Though now Jardin Boboli is listed which is the garden next to the Belvedere adjoining the Palazzo Pitti in central Florence (I decided not to go in when I had the chance, hey ho, a reason to return I suppose)

Not on the T-list but were inscribed:
Jardin Boboli
Jardin Pratolino
Palais de Seravezza
Villa de Castello


Yep, I looked at a few nominations and they just had the details for the larger ones, the applications didn't show the nuance of the smaller WHS core.

I will leave them as they are at the moment, as the ICUN dataset will hopefully be out soon to supersede them. I think there is some benefit to having an idea of the current national parks and the general shape/ buffer zones for the intervening time though.

http://whc.unesco.org/en/newproperties/

The hill forts of Rajasthan are located in Africa (Gulf of Guinea) ...

Like the Medici Villas (12 instead of 14), Kaesong (8 instead of 11) and Tauric Chersonese (8 instead of 9) have components of the series that have been forgotten.

:) ah the problems of defaulting to 0'00N 0'00W

Also Sehlabathebe NP has moved from Lesotho to the other end of the continent to be in the Egyptian Sahara I think they got their north and south muddled up.

Interesting - I think the point is actually the "famous" 0 degrees Latitude/ 0 degrees longitude point - some people even deliberately take sea voyages just to go there and photograph the ship's location screen and gain some mystical energy/wisdom from having done so!!

I guess that, whoever was responsible for entering the true grid reference of the Hill Forts forgot to do so and the system reverted to 00 00 00 00 00 00 !!

The individual map for the site shows each of the forts correctly located in India!

I was just looking into the Red Bay Whaling Station, and notice that we have another "Pile Dwellings" in our hands here:
"The excavation sites have been reburied for protection, or
are underwater, covered by tarpaulins. Few elements are
immediately visible to the inexpert visitor."

I am really fond of sites like these, and found this glossy brochure to persuade the sceptics....
http://uniqueukraine.travel/files/uploaded/Wooden%20Tserkvas_1.pdf

Since my initial disparaging comment I must admit to growing fond of the Tserkvas. My hesitation on welcoming them though was more to do with them being a little over represented as a form of heritage. Still I think they would make a lovely site to visit, some of the interiors look phenomenal!