UNESCO’s World Heritage List includes as many as 1223 properties right across the globe which the World Heritage Committee considers as having “outstanding universal value”.
Most of them are cultural sites (952) but they also include some 231 natural sites and 40 which have both qualities.
The UK is actually home to 35 sites on the list, ranging from Stonehenge and the English Lake District to neolithic Orkney and the City of Bath.
London itself is home to four internationally recognised UNESCO World Heritage Sites. These include the Tower of London, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey (including the neighbouring St Margaret’s Church), and maritime Greenwich.
The first of the four to be added to the list was the 10 hectare site of Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey in 1987 (described as being of “great historic and symbolic significance”). It was followed by the Tower of London in 1988, and the 109 hectare area covering the Queen’s House, Old Royal Naval College and Royal Observatory known as maritime Greenwich in 1997.
The 132 hectare site of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew was the most recent addition to the list in 2003.
As well as being added to the list, sites can also be removed as happened when Liverpool became the third site to be removed from the list in 2021 due to what the World Heritage Committee said was “the irreversible loss of attributes conveying the outstanding universal value of the property”.
Concerns have been raised over the Tower of London’s future on the list due to surrounding development and, of course, there are always other sites that can be added (we vote for Hampton Court Palace, among others).
Exploring London 