UNESCO Bucket List

Walk the sculpted mud corridors of Chan Chan, the largest adobe city ever built

One of the world’s largest squares, framed by the tiled masterpieces of Safavid Isfahan.

The world's largest car-free old city.

The largest ancient castle complex in the world, with St Vitus Cathedral, the Golden Lane cottages and the hourly guard change.

Fly over the Nazca Lines, giant desert figures etched into Peru's coastal plain two thousand years ago

The Nguyen emperors’ walled citadel and the royal tombs along the Perfume River, Vietnam’s answer to the Forbidden City.

Ramesses II's colossal rock-cut temples.

The guardian lion of the Giza plateau.

Hike between medieval tower villages under the highest peaks of the Caucasus.

Eighth-century Buddhist temple of stone pagodas and painted halls, paired with the Seokguram grotto Buddha above it.

Georgian spa city with Roman baths.

Ruined former Siamese capital, UNESCO-listed.

Sunken Byzantine reservoir under Istanbul, its columns rising from black water.

Catch a 15-minute audience with Leonardo's fading masterpiece on a Milan refectory wall

Rock-cut cave temples in Maharashtra, crowned by the monolithic Kailasa temple.

Xi'an's buried army of clay warriors.

Visit the ancient Buddhist monastery of Takht-i-Bahi in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. This well-preserved UNESCO World Heritage site, dating from the 1st century CE, features a main stupa, monastic cells, and meditation courtyards perched on a hilltop with sweeping views of the surrounding valley. Explore the intricate stone carvings and imagine the lives of monks who once studied here.

Visit Ilulissat Icefjord, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Greenland known for its massive icebergs and stunning Arctic scenery.

Visit Lake Assal, the lowest point in Africa and one of the saltiest lakes in the world, located in Djibouti.

Visit Bamyan, a historic city in Afghanistan known for its ancient Buddhist heritage and the famous Buddha statues that were destroyed in 2001.

Visit the Centennial Hall in Wroclaw, a UNESCO World Heritage site known for its pioneering modernist architecture and large dome structure

The Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa on the platform holiest to Judaism and third-holiest to Islam.

Thomas Jefferson's self-designed neoclassical house, and the plantation he never freed.

Darius the Great cut his story into a cliff in three languages; the Rosetta Stone of cuneiform.

Nineteen masonry instruments from the 1730s, including a sundial accurate to two seconds.

Kanaga masks and five-metre sirige poles danced on the cliffs of Bandiagara.

A White Sea island fortress-monastery that became the first camp of the Gulag.

Three thousand terraced evaporation pools on an Andean hillside, worked by the same families since Inca times.

The most complete Gothic cathedral in France, with 176 windows of unrepeatable twelfth-century blue.