A Unesco committee, meeting in China, has added a number of new sites to its World Heritage List, including sites in China, India, Iran, Spain and the Netherlands.
One of the best-known sites added is Madrid’s Paseo del Prado, a tree-lined boulevard that was Europe’s first venue for leisurely strolling by people of all classes and its neighbor, the Retiro Park.
One of the least-known, but possibly most unusual, was the Waterlinien of the Netherlands, a system of waterworks and over 1,000 forts, casemates, sluices and wooden houses built in the 19th century; it was designed to create meters-deep water barriers to any invader by flooding pre-created ditch areas.
Others on the list include China’s Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan, India’s Kakatiya Rudreshwara Temple, and the Trans-Iranian railway to the World Heritage list.
image: Uitermeer fort is part of the defence line. (Bert van As/Wikimedia
