UNESCO World Heritage sites - relevant for you as travel destinations in Europe?

It plays no part in my decisions

I am smiling, douglas Great answer and a good point. Thank you.

For my city I never visited Hufeisensiedlung in Berlin-Britz but just explored that it can be a great place for people who like pictures of entry doors.

Do UNESCO World Heritage sites play a role in your travel planning?

No not at all. I do not tend to visit sites because some agency places importance on it. I visit the Ironbridge Gorge area not because it is a UNESCO World Heritage site, but it is important to me as the birthplace of the modern iron industry.

Thanks, VAP.

Your post brought me to the fact that maybe travel agencies or travel providers tend to plan their itineraries based on World Heritage sites. Thinking of Norway which has 1,700 fjords but just two of them are World Nature Heritage sites although other fjords compare a somehow comparable spectacular beauty on their own. Therefore the cruise ship providers add these fjords to their program - no longer in the future because the emission regulation is so hard from 2026 on that nearly no large cruise ship of today will be able to fulfill it.

Yes, absolutely. We stop to see them but don't necessarily plan trips around them.

Only if it’s a site of interest to me. There are plenty I’d never visit.

Usually it's after the fact that I learn that the places I visited are also UNESCO World Heritage Sites. However if I am visiting a place in which there are not of tourist resources written about it I'll browse the UNESCO site to get ideas, like the historic silver mine in Tarnowskie Góry in southern Poland.

An easy yes. We choose our destination and then these sites inform our plans as we develop them. I consider them to be a pretty reliable recommendation.

Interesting thread, Mark!

I'll say that I usually don't notice something is a UNESCO site until I'm there and see something that mentions it.

For Domestic travel in the US I'd say my criteria for choosing locations is more along the lines of whether there is a unit of the National Park Service in the area including National Monuments, National Battlefields, etc. Sometimes State Parks are pretty good too.

In Europe, as mentioned, I might go see sights and then find they are listed.

World Heritage sites that impressed me?

I see that there is a listing for the Heart of Neolithic Orkney....yes, this area blew me away so much last August that I'm making a return trip in 2025. The Neolithic caves in France are listed and yes, the ones I've been to were astonishing.

For the US, I've been to quite a number and yes, Yellowstone has my heart with at least yearly visits.

I'm surprised at the number of sites in UK and France I've been to as well.

Sorta. If I find I am going to or near a WHS I investigate it in more detail to learn about it.

Most impressive is the Town of Bamberg. Though I don't think it was a consideration from the UN, a very large part of my most impressive response is the Smoked Beer they brew there.

If the practice of UNESCO designations motivates governments to preserve and maintain important cultural sites, then I fully approve of it. However, like several of the respondents above, I do not deliberately select my travel destinations from the UNESCO list. But I happen to be fairly well-acquainted with world history and cultures, at least for one who is not an academic authority, and I never choose a travel destination without knowing perfectly well, in advance, why I’m going there. (I’m not the sort to appear on this forum to ask “I’m going to Spain; what should I see and do there?”) Now I’m sure many of the travel sites I have visited possessed UNESCO designations (in which case I am pleased to have supported the practice), for given my interests, my criteria for choosing sites to visit are bound to conform to UNESCO’s criteria for designating them. And I would certainly recommend the UNESCO list to curious tourists whose itineraries are not as well-determined as mine.

I travel Europe less than other parts of the world and though I rarely plan a trip around a UNESCO designation, recently I have started making myself aware of them. There is a World Heritage app with lists that you can tick off when you visit, as well as use it for planning and research. Now there are more than just buildings or natural wonders with Heritage designation, so having the lists in one place is a little interesting.
I have thought the preservation of sites to be a worthwhile reason for designation, but it can also be a negative. One example is the city of Luang Prabang in Laos. I was there in January. It was colonized by French and the city layout and colonial French structures put it on the LIst. Buildings all need to stay 3 floors or less, no new building can be any taller, rigorous rules for any renovation or changes. Good for tourists, but challenges for locals. And of course, UNESCO wields threats and portends dire consequences (lost of tourists which can be big bucks for the city) if locals don't play along to maintain the criteria to keep it on the List.
So I find myself looking at these sites with a different view these days.

Sometimes (not always) I find the UNESCO tentative lists as interesting as the main list. The places with the full UNESCO World Heritage designation are usually well known and often heavily touristed. The tentative list, on the other hand, often has sites that a country considers important but which haven't quite made it onto the mass tourism radar yet. Some of my favorite sites in Turkey, for example, have only "tentative" designation --- Perge, Termessos, Sagalassos, Aspendos, and many more. All are interesting and none have overwhelming crowds.

Interesting thread. I’ve almost planned a trip solely around a UNESCO site. In 1990 we were driving through Quedlinburg in December at dusk and I could barely make out the half-timbered houses in sever states of disrepair. There were pin pricks of light coming through roofs and walls. I told my husband that the former East German town looked so special I simply had to return before it became discovered and was surely given UNESCO status. Several years later it was given UNESCO status and I was sure it would be vastly changed when I finally saw it again in daylight. We were given the opportunity to do a house exchange in Quedlinburg in 2012 and we spent a month in Quedlinburg. It was undergoing some much needed renovation and buildings were being painted in their beautiful colors again by Polish workers we were told. The main square and most side streets were so roughly cobbled it was challenging to walk on them but they were beautiful. We went back to the area again for three weeks in 2019 and there were very few cobblestone streets left. I didn’t care for the huge even surface of the main square pavers. When we climbed up to the castle overlook we noticed that about 80% of the city center had brand new, and much needed, tile roofs!

We were so glad we’ve had these glimpses of a place before and after it’s UNESCO status designation.

In the far north of Scotland the Flow Country has just been awarded World Heritage Status- making it the equal of the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland and the Jurassic Coast in Devon- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2gz1p2v12o

This is a little known part of Scotland to the overseas visitor on the way north to Orkney or doing the NC500 round, but is a really interesting area. It is pretty remote area and has very limited tourist infrastructure.

Forsinard Flows Nature Reserve (with it's own railway station) is the easiest way in. The Forsinard Lodge (which I stayed at when it was the rather eclectic Forsinard Hotel) is the only hotel in the heart of the Flow Country- with just 3 bedrooms.

It may also surprise any visitors as Forsinard station also has a plaque to the WW1 Jellicoe Express train- troop trains which ran from London to Thurso (for Orkney) to serve the Royal Naval fleet at Scapa Flow. The 717. 22 hour, mile journey was the longest ever scheduled train journey in the UK and is an interesting story in it's own right.

UNESCO zones aren't always pretty, but the do represent something unique in culture or history and for that reason they always interest me.

But there are downsides to being a UNESCO zone as well. I live in one, and being UNESCO with its one size fits all rules is difficult at times.

Just as heads up: there are also World Nature Heritage sites; not culture / history only.

The criteria for World Culture Heritage sites are not "one size fits all". Applicants can address one or more criteria with individual comprehensive reason on top.

World Heritage sites can also lose their status, e. g. Dresden (link to an article in German language).

I think they have proliferated so much that it's devalued their uniqueness. So I'll go, "hmm, ok, that's cool" and maybe that adds a little credibility, but I think a lot of it is having the political will in a given community to go through all the paperwork. One of the first world heritage sites I visited, almost 30 years ago, was the Viking settlement remains in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. I believe that was one of the very earliest sites to have this designation, and given its place in our understanding of the European discovery of North America, I found it quite special and worthy of recognition. I don't feel like all the sites now on the list are as special--though the ones I have visited have generally been worth my time.