UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the UK and Overseas Territories

UNESCO World Heritage Sites are designated for having cultural, historical, scientific, or other form of global significance. Sites are judged to contain cultural or natural (or mixed) heritage considered to be of Outstanding Universal Value.

This is embodied in an international treaty called the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (or World Heritage Convention), adopted by UNESCO in 1972.

The 35 Properties (sites) in the UK and Overseas Territories, including ancient landscapes and monuments, areas of global natural significance, and sites that shaped the industrial Revolution, join over 1,200 further properties in more than 165 countries to be inscribed onto the UNESCO World Heritage List.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites belong to everyone, and it is everyone’s duty to protect them for future generations.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites as 'Ambassadors for Peace' Report 2025

In 2016, the UNESCO Chair team in Cultural Property Protection and Peace at Newcastle University, set out to explore what scope there might be for World Heritage Sites to do more to support UNESCO’s founding raison d’être, of contributing to world peace - and for World Heritage Sites ultimately to become ‘Ambassadors for Peace’. This Report sets out the work undertaken by the team in relation to this and presents a series of conclusions and recommendations regarding how this work might now be taken forward.

Explore World Heritage Sites

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Blaenavon Industrial Landscape
Blaenavon is a cultural landscape demonstrating how South Wales was the world’s major producer of iron and coal in the 19th century.
Blenheim Palace
Blenheim Palace is a prominent UNESCO World Heritage site and a major tourist attraction in Oxfordshire.
Canterbury Cathedral, St Augustine's Abbey, and St Martin's Church
When the young monk Augustine landed on the shores of England in the Kingdom of Kent in 597 AD, he came with the mission was to convert the Anglo-Saxon world to the Christian Church in Rome.
The Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd
Some of the most magnificent castles of Wales are reminders of a turbulent time, when English kings and Welsh princes vied for power.
City of Bath
Bath is a double-inscribed World Heritage Site, as the City of Bath in 1987 and then as part of The Great Spa Towns of Europe in 2021. Bath’s World Heritage inscription encompasses the entire city…
Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape
Shaped during a period of intense industrial activity, the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site is testimony to one of the greatest periods of economic…
Derwent Valley Mills
Derwent Valley Mills follows the River Derwent north to south including mill buildings, workers housing and the landscape along the valley from Matlock, through Cromford, Belper, Milford…
Dorset and East Devon Coast: The Jurassic Coast
The Dorset and East Devon Coast, commonly known as the ‘Jurassic Coast’ is a hugely diverse and beautiful landscape on England’s south coast, underpinned by incredible geology of global importance.
Durham Castle and Cathedral
Durham Castle and Cathedral was the historic seat of the Bishops of Durham.
The English Lake District
The English Lake District is a cultural landscape. A landscape of exceptional beauty, shaped by persistent and distinctive agro-pastoral traditions and local industry which give it special character.
The Flow Country
The Flow Country, in Caithness and Sutherland, in the far north of mainland Scotland, is widely considered to be the largest, most intact area of blanket bog in the world.
The Forth Bridge
Opened in 1890, the Forth Bridge, spanning the Firth of Forth to the north-west of Edinburgh, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015. The world’s first major steel structure…
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