UNESCO Heritage Sites

Papahanaumokuakea is a vast and isolated linear cluster of small, low lying islands and atolls, with their surrounding ocean, roughly 250 km to the northwest of the main Hawaiian Archipelago and extending over some 1931 km. The area has deep cosmological and traditional significance for living Native Hawaiian culture, as an ancestral environment, as an embodiment of the Hawaiian concept of kinship between people and the natural world, and as the place where it is believed that life originates and to where the spirits return after death. On two of the islands, Nihoa and Makumanamana, there are archaeological remains relating to pre-European settlement and use. Much of the monument is made up of pelagic and deepwater habitats, with notable features such as seamounts and submerged banks, extensive coral reefs and lagoons. It is one of the largest marine protected areas (MPAs) in the world. Continent: North America Country: United States of America Category: Mixed Criterion: ...

The entire historic site of San Juan with its different monumental components maintains, at the present, a balance between constructed and non-constructed zones. The Fortaleza is tangibly associated with the history of the New World and its explorers and colonists.For the explorers and the colonists of the New World who came from the east, Puerto Rico was an obligatory stopping-place in the Caribbean. From this evolved its primordial strategic role at the beginning of the Spanish colonization. The island was for centuries a stake disputed by the Spanish, French, English and Dutch. The fortifications of the bay of San Juan, the magnificent port to which Puerto Rico owes its name, bear witness to its long military history. Continent: North America Country: United States of America Category: Cultural Criterion: (VI) Date of Inscription: 1983

Mammoth Cave National Park, located in the state of Kentucky, has the world's largest network of natural caves and underground passageways, which are characteristic examples of limestone formations. The park includes by far the longest cave system in the world, with known passages extending some 550 km. It is of geological importance due to the 25 million years of cave-forming action by the Green River and its tributaries. Almost every type of cave formation is known within the site and the geological processes involved in cave formation are continuing. The long passages with huge chambers, vertical shafts, stalagmites and stalactites, gypsum 'flowers' and 'needles' and other natural features of the cave system are all superlative examples of their types. The park and its underground network of more than 550 km surveyed passageways are home to varied flora and fauna (including a number of endangered species). Continent: North America Country: United States...