Unesco registered 13 new cultural sites on its World Heritage List, including five sites in Latin America.
The World Heritage Committee also approved the extension of an existing site in Mexico.
Among the new sites classified as World Heritage are Dholavira, a ragged city in India ; the Hawraman / Uramanat cultural landscape of Iran; the prehistoric Jomon sites in northern Japan and the mining landscape of Roșia Montană in Romania.
In Latin America, these are the new World Heritage sites:
Brazil – Roberto Burle Marx Site
Located west of Rio de Janeiro, this site shows the successful project carried out for more than 40 years by artist and landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx (1909 – 1994), which pretended create a “ living work of art e” and a “landscape laboratory” drawing on native vegetation and drawing inspiration from the ideas of the modernist movement.
The project, which started in 1917, is a landscaped garden representative of the essential elements of Burle Marx’s singular style.
The garden is characterized by its sinuous forms, the exuberance of its massive plantations, the architectural arrangement of its vegetation, the use of tropical botanical species and the incorporation of artistic elements typical of popular folklore.
This is the first modern tropical garden that is part of the Unesco World Heritage List.
Peru – Chankillo Archaeoastronomical Complex
Located north of the coast central Peru, in the Casma Valley, this archaeological site (500 – 200 BC) possesses a set of buildings built in a desert landscape and a series of natural features that, together, work as a perfect solar calendar, using markers that allow observing the movement of the sun along the horizon throughout the year.
The site comprises a Fortified Temple, the Observatory, the Ceremonial Public Space and the Thirteen Cubic Towers that marked the solar path and that are arranged in a row that stretches along the crest of another hill.
It also includes Cerro Mucho Malo, a complementary natural indicator of the thirteen towers.
It is believed that the temple was dedicated to the cult of the sun and the presence of an observation place on each side of the north-south alignment of the towers allowed determining the rising and setting points of the sun in the horizon throughout the year.
Uruguay – Church of Atlántida, work of the engineer Eladio Dieste
The church of Atlántida, with its bell tower and its underground baptistery, is located in Estación Atlántida, at 45 km from Montevideo.
The church complex, inspired by early Christian and medieval Italian religious architecture, was inaugurated in 1960.
Church, built on a rectangular floor plan with a single nave , it presents characteristic wavy walls that support an equally wavy roof, composed of a sequence of reinforced brick Gaussian vaults developed by Eladio Dieste (1917 – 5450).
As indicated in the UNESCO, “the church constitutes an eminent example of the remarkable formal and spatial achievements of modern architecture in Latin America during the second half of the 20th century.”
“And it embodies the search for social equality with a sober use of resources. ”
Chile – Settlement and artificial mummification of the Chinchorro culture
Located in the Arica and Parinacota region, the site consists of three components: Faldeo Norte del Morro de Arica, Colón 10, both in the city of Arica, and Desembocadura de Camarones, in a rural setting about 100 km further south.
Together they offer a testimony of a culture of marine hunter-gatherers that resided in the arid and hostile north coast of the Atacama desert, in the extreme north of Chile, from approximately 5450 BC until 890 BC
The site presents the oldest known archaeological evidence of artificial mummification of bodies with cemeteries that contain both artificially mummified bodies and some that were preserved due to environmental conditions.
- The fascinating story of the “chinchorro culture” that managed to mummify their dead more than two thousand years before the Egyptians
Tools made with materials have been found on the site minerals and vegetables, as well as in Simple bone and shell instruments that allowed intensive exploitation of marine resources.
The site, Unesco points out, “ constitutes a unique testimony of the complex spirituality of the Chinchorro culture. ”
Mexico – Franciscan monastery and cathedral of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Tlaxcala
The complex is an extension of the site “First monasteries of the 16th century on the slopes of Popocatepetl” , which was inscribed on the Heritage List at 1994.
It was built between 1537 Y 1540 after the alliance between Spaniards and Tlaxcalans.
The site includes the monastery and cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption and is part of the first construction program started in 1524 for the evangelization and colonization of the territories from northern Mexico.
The complex is one of the first five monasteries established by Franciscan, Dominican and Augustinian friars, and one of the three that still stands.
The extension, according to UNESCO, “contributes to a better understanding of the development of a new architectural model that influenced both urban development and monastic buildings until the 18th century.”
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