Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

The final question comes from GisselleT over on the Discord Server who asks, You’ve talked a lot about UNESCO World Heritage sites, do they sometimes overlap with popular tourist attractions? Or are they stand alone? Are they as popular, always have lots of people, or are they hidden gems?

I’d say about 10% of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, maybe less, are ones that you have probably heard of. These are things like the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Statue of Liberty, and Angkor, for example.

There are a bunch of cities in Europe where the whole city is just lumped together as a UNESCO site. Venice, Paris, Rome, and others.

The other 90% are more obscure sites that you probably have never heard of and wouldn’t even know about them unless you went out of your way to visit world heritage sites.

That being said, I’d say about 90% of those are worth visiting. There are a few duds, but most of them are pretty interesting.

Most of the obvious attractions have already been put on the list so the new places that have been declared World Heritage Sites tend to be ever more obscure.