UNESCO Heritage Sites

Masada is a symbol of the ancient Jewish kingdom of Israel, of its violent destruction in the later 1st century CE, and of the subsequent Diaspora. The palace of Herod the Great at Masada is an outstanding example of a luxurious villa of the early Roman Empire, while the camps and other fortifications that encircle the hill constitute the finest and most complete Roman siege works to have survived to the present day. Continent: Asia Country: Israel Category: Cultural Criterion: (III)(IV) (VI) Date of Inscription: 2001

On the western slope of the Mount Carmel range, the property includes the cave sites of Tabun, Jamal, el-Wad and Skhul. It covers 54 ha and contains cultural deposits representing 500,000 years of human evolution with evidence of burials, early stone architecture and the transition from a hunter-gathering lifestyle to agriculture and animal husbandry, demonstrating the unique existence of both Neanderthals and Early Anatomically Modern Humans within the same Middle Palaeolithic cultural framework, the Mousterian. As such, it has become a key site of the chrono-stratigraphic framework for human evolution in general, and the prehistory of the Levant in particular. Ninety years of archaeological research have revealed a cultural sequence of unparalleled duration, providing an archive of early human life in south-west Asia. Continent: Asia Country: Israel Category: Cultural Criterion: (III)(IV) Date of Inscription: 2012

Birthplace of Jesus Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route, Bethlehem is situated 10km south of Jerusalem on the site identified by Christian tradition as the birthplace of Jesus since the 2nd century. A church was first completed there in 339 A.D. and the edifice that replaced it after a fire in the 6th century retains elaborate floor mosaics from the original edifice. The site also includes Latin, Greek Orthodox, Franciscan and Armenian convents and churches, as well as bell towers, terraced gardens and a pilgrimage route. The church was originally commissioned in 327 CE by Constantine and his mother Helena over the site that is still traditionally considered to be located over the cave that marks the birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth. The Church of the Nativity site's original basilica was completed in 339 CE and destroyed by fire during the Samaritan Revolts in the sixth century CE. A new basilica was built 565 CE by the Byzantine Empire, restoring the architectural to...