Updated for 2012, this guide fully describes every official UNESCO World Heritage site. In 1959, UNESCO launched an international campaign to safeguard the world's most important cultural, natural and mixed sites, which led to the first World Heritage List. In clear text and photographs describing each site, this updated and revised edition of World Heritage Sites details all 936 sites on the list, including the 25 added in 2011. Covering 153 countries, the World Heritage List is a valuable tool in the battle to preserve cultural and natural heritage. Its strict criteria mean only the most extraordinary and important sites make it onto the list, such as the Statue of Liberty, the Great Barrier Reef, the Historic Center of Vienna, Vatican City, the Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site, Robben Island, Ancient Damascus, and the Tower of London. At the same time, failure to maintain the criteria can result in being delisted, as was the Dresden Elbe Valley in 2009. Some of the new sites added in 2011 and included in this book are: Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia Historic Bridgetown and its Garrison, Barbados Saloum Delta, Senegal Kenya Lake System in the Great Rift Valley Fagus Factory in Alfeld, Germany Ningaloo Coast, Australia Ancient Villages of Northern Syria Citadel of the Ho Dynasty, Vietnam Petroglyphic Complexes of the Mongolian Altai The Persian Garden, Iran Featuring gorgeous photographs and updated maps, World Heritage Sites is uniquely comprehensive.