World Heritage Explorer is an independent educational project designed to uncover and share the richness of our world’s cultural and natural heritage. Dive into detailed site profiles, immersive imagery, interactive maps, and tools that help you explore UNESCO World Heritage Sites across the globe.
Built around the UNESCO World Heritage List, the project brings together authoritative open data, curated narratives, and interactive tools to help users discover some of the most significant places on Earth — from ancient cities and sacred landscapes to natural wonders and biodiversity hotspots.
Designed for Discovery
Beyond static listings, the platform encourages exploration. Users can browse sites by country, criteria, category, or year of inscription, explore nearby World Heritage Sites geographically, or jump to a random site and uncover something unexpected. The goal is to inspire curiosity, not just provide facts.
For Learners of All Ages
World Heritage Explorer is designed for: learners and students, educators and researchers, travelers seeking deeper cultural context, and younger audiences discovering global heritage. Complex information is presented in a clear, approachable way without oversimplifying the subject matter.
Structured, Reliable Site Profiles
Every World Heritage Site is presented through a consistent, richly structured profile, combining: Official UNESCO descriptions and justifications, geographic context with interactive maps, clear categorization by country, year, criteria, and heritage type. This structure allows users to explore sites individually or discover meaningful connections between them.
Open Data and Licensing
World Heritage Explorer draws extensively on open data sources, including UNESCO World Heritage List datasets, Wikimedia and Wikidata resources, and public geographic and demographic datasets. Original contributions by World Heritage Explorer are shared under the same open licensing principles that make the project possible, and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.
A Continuously Evolving Project
The platform is designed to evolve over time. New features and exploratory tools are added regularly, content is updated as open datasets change, and design and usability are refined based on real-world use.
An Open Vision of Heritage
World Heritage Explorer embraces the idea that heritage knowledge should be open, interconnected, and constantly enriched. The world’s heritage belongs to everyone. World Heritage Explorer exists to help people discover it, understand it, and value it.
Independence and Transparency
The project is not affiliated with UNESCO or the World Heritage Committee. World Heritage Explorer is created as an independent non-profit initiative committed to transparency, accuracy, and respect for source material.