In Nayagram, every resident is an artist earning a living by showcasing their talent through the traditional art form of Indian scroll painting called ‘Patachitra’.
Tag: unesco
Ahead of the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris-based daily Les Echos talks with chief architect Philippe Villeneuve, who oversaw the five-year reconstruction project, about his work and what visitors can expect.
The foundation of a major UN agency, the election of a female Prime Minister and the opening of a famous Broadway musical.
Updated June 11, 2024 at 12:00 p.m. On this day in 1963, Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức self-immolated to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. Why did the monk self-immolate during the Vietnam war? Buddhists were facing religious discrimination, and the South Vietnamese government had imposed various restrictions on them. […]
From North America to Africa to Europe, massive teacher shortages are threatening to derail progress on global development goals. The causes vary and sometimes overlap, but the price will be paid in the future.
Mali’s “mysterious city” welcomes a new class of students trained in looking after ancient books. From conservation to digitization of these works, a colossal task awaits them to preserve this endangered heritage and the secrets they contain.
The Patagonian National Park is a spectacular and unique landscape that illustrates the outstanding beauty of nature. But it is at risk of becoming a victim of the climate crisis.
The Puszcza Białowieska, one of Europe’s oldest forests, has become a battleground, with environmentalists increasingly concerned about widespread logging in the forest, which is also ground zero for heightened tensions with neighbor Belarus and the ongoing migration crisis. And, all across Poland, increased logging with political motivations has been stirring activist tensions.
The U.S. is set to rejoin UNESCO, after Donald Trump pulled the country out in 2017, accusing it of being biased against Israel. The reasons for the return include artificial intelligence and pure geopolitics.
On this day in 1972, photographer Nick Ut captured the devastating impact of the Vietnam War on innocent civilians, particularly children. The girl in the photo is Kim Phuc, a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl, running naked and severely burned from a napalm attack. What happened to Kim Phuc after the Napalm Girl photograph was taken? Kim […]
The baguette is now on UNESCO’s cultural heritage list. But France’s independent bakeries are struggling to survive amid rising energy costs and competition from larger chains.
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Russia Cuts Off Gas To Europe
The Nord Stream 1 pipeline halted its gas flow into Europe Wednesday morning. Russian state energy giant Gazprom said this was part of a scheduled stoppage announced last week, and is expected to last through September 2. Still, the cut raises renewed concern over the power Russia wields with its energy supplies ahead of the […]
What is happening in Ukraine is decidedly not a war of words — it’s a war. Every day people are dying, soldiers and civilians alike. And it is that war which will determine the fate of both Ukraine and Russia, and have a lasting impact all around the world. Stay up-to-date with the latest on […]
? སྐུ་གཟུགས་བཟང་པོ།!* Welcome to Thursday, where the UK reports highest daily COVID cases, one of the biggest storms of 2021 hits the Philippines and Australia’s new musical hit makers are… birds. And for German daily Die Welt, writer and historian Karl-Heinz Göttert looks at how the Nazis attempted to use Christmas for their own ends. […]
In case you missed it, the World Heritage Centre of UNESCO recently revealed its draft decision to list the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger” — a decision that appeared to shock the Australian government. In an opinion piece published June 30th in The Australian newspaper, Environment Minister Sussan Ley acknowledged climate change is the biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef, and that it “has been through a few rough years.” She has also suggested, however, UNESCO’s draft in-danger decision is a surprise and was politically motivated. Neither of these claims is credible. So let’s look at Australia’s reaction […]
Paúl Rivas was a 45 year-old Ecuadorian photographer. He was kidnapped last April and later killed because of his investigations on drug-related border violence for Ecuadorian daily El Comercio. On the occasion of the “International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists’ and in partnership with UNESCO, OneShot helps keep his story alive. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/vPsNE58VjHY expand=1] Slain Photojournalist – UNESCO — © Paúl Rivas / OneShot In the past twelve years, more than 1,050 journalists have been killed for reporting the news and bringing information to the public. The United Nations proclaimed November 2 as the “International Day to […]
It’s time for other countries to push back rather than just sit back and accept the consequences of Trump’s me-first approach to trade and diplomacy.
Indigenous groups say the Nicaraguan government should do more to protect the massive but quickly disappearing Bosawás Biosphere Reserve.
-Analysis- Hamburg is a sleepy place most days. When the G20 isn’t in town, the port city churns with the comings and goings of large, steel barges in its spacious harbor. To the millions of visitors who arrive in the city each year, for business or pleasure, Hamburg appears as a sort of peaceful locus […]
VILLA UKIKA — Just outside of Puerto Williams, the world’s southernmost city, lives an extraordinary woman. This far-flung outpost on Chile’s Tierra del Fuego, across the Straight of Magellan, is quiet literally at the end of the earth. And at 89, Cristina Calderón is nearing the end of her life — when she will take […]
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Touch Stonehenge
When I visited the prehistoric site of Stonehenge in southern England, it was still possible to walk among, and even touch, the megaliths. Not for long, though: A year later, the damage to the standing stones caused by erosion forced the authorities to start keeping visitors at a safe distance.
LIMA — The Sheraton hotel chain is being accused of threatening Peru’s cultural patrimony by building a new hotel in protected parts of Cuzco, the ancient capital of the Inca empire and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Accusing Sheraton of violating the conditions of an earlier municipal permit, Peru’s culture ministry has decided to appeal […]
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Maltese Megaliths
The limestone temples on the island of Malta rank among the world’s oldest religious sites. As with Stonehenge or the Ecuadorian Kalasaya, some of the site’s prehistoric monoliths were astronomically aligned. I aligned this daytime shot with a perfectly blue sky.
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Walking In A Painting
I’m not the only one to find the Alyscamps, near Arles in the south of France, picturesque. Both Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin immortalized the alley of sarcophagi in this great Roman necropolis.
PARIS — Should Palmyra be rebuilt? And under what conditions? No sooner had Syrian forces and the Russian Army freed the “pearl of the desert,” a spectacular Greco-Roman city with traces of Eastern influence, from the yoke of the Islamic State (ISIS), then the debate over how to restore it to its former glory was […]
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Cool Like The Romans
When in Rome, on a particularly hot day, do as the Romans do: Leave town, head for the nearby Villa d’Este and walk behind the water of the Fontana dell’Ovato.
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Troublesome Visitors
The Alhambra palace, in southern Spain’s Andalusia region, is a jewel of Islamic architecture, a testament to Moorish culture in the country. There would have been even more beauty to admire had my fellow Frenchmen from Napoleon’s armies not destroyed several towers 150 years before we arrived.
ROME — Italian soldiers and antiquity experts alike will help lead a new dedicated UN peacekeeping force designed to protect and restore the world’s cultural monuments exposed to war and other conflicts. Italian daily Corriere della Sera reports that the taskforce, the first of its kind, will be composed of 30 Italian paramilitary troops and […]
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Miraculously Spared
The baroque Merced church is something of a curiosity in Antigua, Guatemala, a city famous for its ruins of colonial churches: It held up admirably well after a series of devastating earthquakes in the 18th and 19th centuries, after which the capital was moved from Antigua to its current location, Guatemala City.
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On This Day – November 16
Tourism feeds a construction and real estate boom in the historical town of Cartagena de Indias. But the shadows of this former slave port hide a huge gap between rich and poor.
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Next-Door Wonder
You don’t always have to travel halfway across the world to see a historical wonder. Here is a shot of the closest UNESCO World Heritage Site to me: the 18th-century Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans, just a little more than an hour’s drive away from my hometown.
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The Lion’s Claw
The paws are all that remain of the Sigiriya, the “Lion Rock” in central Sri Lanka. The giant sculpture was meant to guard the entrance to a now-destroyed palace — and judging only by the size of one of its claw (this is my wife sitting next to it), one can imagine it was doing […]
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Bridging History
The Stari Most (“Old Bridge”) was infamously destroyed in 1993 during the Croat–Bosnian War. Twenty years later, thanks to UNESCO funds, it was rebuilt with its notable arched Ottoman design. Motivated both by the architecture and recent historical events, I made sure to make my own crossing.
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Flowery Folklore
Suzhou is often called “the Venice of China” because of its many canals and stone bridges. The city’s lush classical gardens are part of the UNESCO World Heritage list, making it a major tourist attraction in the region — and leading to very colorful displays of “folklore” …
In Beijing alone, more than 1,000 acres of historical areas have been lost since 1990. As rural Chinese move to cities, the country must figure out how to preserve its heritage.
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The Candlelit Path To Nirvana
It only seems fitting that to achieve Nirvana — or, as it is sometimes referred to in the West, “enlightenment” — some Buddhists would turn to burning candles. This woman picked the right place to pray: The ancient city of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka was the center of Theravada Buddhism for many centuries.
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The Invisible Invader
Although it was built to protect the Chinese Empire against military incursions, the Great Wall of China faces a more insidious enemy: erosion caused by sandstorms, which has chipped away at the massive structure for centuries. I witnessed the potency of the assault when I went there almost 20 years ago: The haze in the […]
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Beheaded Saint, Decapitated Church
The Arbore church in northern Romania was built in the early 16th century and dedicated to St. John the Baptist — the martyr beheaded by Salome. Coincidentally, the Orthodox monastery itself suffered a comparable fate when marauding Cossack troops melted the lead roof to make bullets.
Amid the mayhem of civil war, huge money is to be made from stealing and selling archeological treasures from Iraq and Syria. ISIS ambitions are fueling an already huge black market.