UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Europe

The old town of Rauma is just too cute with its pastel colored wooden houses and cobblestone streets. The (mostly) well-preserved buildings with ornamented windows frames are still used as homes, shops and public offices, making a Rauma re lively town and not just an open-air museum. Rauma is a UNESCO World Heritage site and receives (understandable) a few tourists. The town was founded in 1442 and is the third oldest town in the country (after Turku and Porvoo).

The Struve Geodetic Arc is a series of triangulation points, stretching over a distance of 2,820 kilometres (1,750 mi) from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea. The points were set up in a survey by the astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve who first carried out an accurate measurement of a long segment of a meridian, which helped to establish the size and shape of the Earth. Originally, there were 265 station points. The UNESCO World Heritage Site includes 34 points in ten countries (north to south: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine), six of which are in Finland. Alatornio Church, one of the station points in Finland, is pictured.

Half the fun of a visit to Mtskheta is trying to pronounce it correctly. With 5 consonants in a row, it's no easy task. But once you manage to get there, you certainly won't be disappointed. One of the oldest cites in Georgia, the historical monuments of the Mtskheta area are recognized a UNESCO world heritage site. The varying forts, churches, cathedrals and monasteries which surround the tiny town date anywhere from the 3rd century BC to as young as 1,000 years old. Easily doable as a day trip out of the capital, Tbilisi, Mtskheta is the place to get your fix of religious buildings.

Svaneti is a picture-perfect mountainous region. Here you can find traditional villages with strange soaring defensive towers set in lush valleys on a backdrop of snow-capped mountains. The alpine scenery here can easily compete with the crowded Alps. The main town in Svaneti is Mestia which can be reached by a winding mountain road or a often-cancelled flight. From here there are plenty of good trekking opportunities (pick any direction), either just day treks or, for those with the right gear, multi-days treks to, for example, the base of some of the highest peaks in Caucasus. You can also continue further to the UNESCO World Heritage enlisted town of Ushguli at the foot of Mt Shkhara (5068 m), the highest mountain in Georgia.

Svaneti is slowly but surely turning into a hot travel destination for nature lovers, trekkers and backpackers, and Mestia is already gearing up for the boom. It got a new (tiny) airport, ancient Svaneti towers are getting restored, homestays and even hotels are shooting up and the town square is getting totally rebuilt. So come to Svaneti, the sooner the better.

Berlin Modernism Housing Estates is a collection of estate houses, which were built in the 1920s in order to deal with the housing shortage after WWI. They were groundbreaking because they combined mass produced houses for people with low income with innovative architecture and urban planning. The same reasons they became an UNESCO World Heritage site. The estates are spread throughout Berlin, so it's unlikely that you will go and see all six groups. The six groups are Großsiedlung Siemensstadt (Siemensstadt Housing Estate), Siedlung Schillerpark, Großsiedlung Britz Hufeisensiedlung (Horseshoe Estate, pin on map), Weiße Stadt (White City), Wohnstadt Carl Legien and Gartenstadt Falkenberg, where Siemenstadt group is the biggest and most diverse.

For many Hamburg only means Reeperbahn, a long street (well, actually a whole area) lined with restaurants, bars, strip joints, sex shops and brothels - all fueled by boozed up stags parties and business men with company accounts (Hamburg has also a big fairground). And although a night out in Reeperbahn is mandatory, Hamburg is a progressive city with many cool neighbourhoods. The harbour has always been the heart of Hamburg and these years Speicherstadt (a UNESCO site) with its fine old warehouses-turned-posh condos is getting a face lift with daring new architecture. Sleazy St. Pauli with Reeperbahn, Europe's biggest red-light district, and famous football-team-accessories (think skull and bones) still has its edge. And the districts of Schanzenviertel and Karolinenviertel have cool quarters with indy fashion, alternative design shops, and weekend flea markets.

Berlin is clustered with important historical buildings, but only three groups have made to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, namely Berlin Modernism Housing Estates, Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin, and the Museum Island. The Museum Island (Museumsinsel) is an small island in Berlin’s River Spree with five world class museums all built between 1824 and 1930: Altes Museum (Old Museum), Neues Museum (New Museum) which holds the iconic bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Bode Museum and Pergamon Museum which holds the famous Pergamon Altar. During WWII the Museum Island got heavily damaged, and the Neues Museum was in ruins. Post 1945 the Museum Island was in East Germany and some reconstruction was done, but the reconstruction of Neues Museum wasn't completed until 2009.

Potsdam has always been an important and rich city and was the home for kings untill the beginning of the 20th century. During the 18th century Frederick the Great made it even more splendid by constructing Sanssouci Park. Besides flowers, terraces, and fountains, the huge park contained several palaces (including Sanssouci and the gigantic Neues Palais), temples and even a golden Chinese tea pavilion. Even more buildings were added under Frederick William IV. Sanssouci Park is, along with a group of parks and palaces in Berlin, enlisted as one UNESCO World Heritage site.

Acropolis is of course a huge and important historical site, but what really makes it pop, is its location. Perched on top of a hill right in the middle of Athens, so it can be seen from almost everywhere within the city. The panoramic view from the top is equal amazing and stretch all the way into the Aegean Sea. It was the ancient Greek (not a given) who built this magnificent temple complex around 440 BC and no expense was spared. The crown jewel is no doubt Parthenon with its tall marble columns, which are constructed such they lean slightly inwards to create the optical illusion that they look straight. The Acropolis site is surrounded by several other ancient sites on it's slope, like Theatre of Dionysus and further down, the Ancient Agora (ancient city square). To fully appreciate and understand this masterpiece, a visit to the Acropolis museum is a must.

The architect Iktinos who designed the Parthenon did more than just that. On the Peloponnese peninsula, stands the by-him-designed temple of Apollo Epicurius, also called the temple of Bassae (Vasses). It is one of the best kept temples of its time and has some quite unique features. You can only walk around the temple but unfortunately not enter the central area. Inside used to be some nice friezes, which as so many ancient Greek art has been taken to London in the early 19th century.
For decades, this temple has been undergoing restoration works and in order to protect it from the elements it has been covered by a large tent, which prohibits a full-sized view. It looks like it will still be covered for quite a while. Many of the columns need to be entirely removed in order fix the fundaments of the temple.
The remote location of this temple still makes this World Heritage listed site also a great place to visit.