UNESCO Travel Bucket List

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

Ramesses II's colossal rock-cut temples.

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

Ruined former Siamese capital, UNESCO-listed.

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

Georgian spa city with Roman baths.

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

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.

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

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

The Avenue of the Baobabs at sunset and the stone forest of the Tsingy de Bemaraha.

The door of the desert and the film studios of Gladiator and Game of Thrones, next to the Ait Benhaddou kasbah.

Stilt palafito houses and wooden churches on Chiloe island, with curanto cooked in the ground.

The Argentine side of Iguazu Falls, walkways to the Devil's Throat and toucans in the forest.

The 27-metre mud minaret of the 16th-century mosque and the Tuareg gateway to the Sahara.

Wide colonial avenues, the railway museum and the Matobo hills of balancing rocks and rock art.

The gateway to the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree, the oldest rainforest on Earth.

A windswept Atlantic port with 18th-century ramparts, a fish market and kitesurfing on the beach.

The castle and the Door of No Return of the Atlantic slave trade, and Kakum's canopy walkway inland.