Seville, Spain - Thirteen new locations have been added to the UNESCO World Heritage list, which now numbers a total 890 sites, the United Nations organization said Monday. The World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is about to conclude a nine-day meeting in Seville, Spain.
Three of the new sites were in countries that had no previous World Heritage treasures.
They were the historic town centre of Cidade Velha in the Cape Verde Islands, the millennium-old Loropeni ruins in Burkina Faso, and the Sulamain-Too Sacred Mountain in Kyrgyzstan.
New European sites included the Wadden Sea wetland, which is a breeding and wintering area for up to 12 million birds, in Germany and the Netherlands; the Dolomites mountains in northern Italy, and the Art Nouveau style Stoclet House in Brussels, Belgium.
Spain's Tower of Hercules lighthouse, the Swiss watchmaking towns of Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle, and the 19th century Pontcysyllte aqueduct and canal in Britain were also accepted on the list.
Other new sites include China's sacred Buddhist Mount Wutai, with more than 50 monasteries; Peru's 5,000-year-old Sacred City of Caral-Supe, the royal tombs of the Joseon Dynasty in South Korea, and the Shushtar historical hydraylic system in Iran.
Germany's Dresden Elbe Valley became the first cultural site to be removed from the list, because of the construction of a traffic bridge that was seen as destroying a part of its landscape.
Three sites were downgraded to the status of endangered sites, due to concern over their preservation.
They were the Mtskheta historic churches in Georgia, the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System, and Los Katios national park in Colombia.
Azerbaijan earned praise for improving the preservation of the Walled City of Baku, which was taken off the danger list.
Three extensions were added to existing World Heritage sites. They were the saltworks of Salins-les-Bains in France, the historic town centre of Levoca in Slovakia, and the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park in the Philippines.
The UNESCO meeting was scheduled to end on Tuesday.
