See the 12 World Heritage Sites the U.N. Protected First

  • Colorized exterior view of the Aachen Cathedral in 1927. Germany.
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  • Quito's Plaza Grande square seen on Sept. 12, 2008, in a week in which the Ecuadorean capital celebrates its 30th anniversary as a World Heritage Site. Founded by the Spanish in 1534, the city of Quito was in 1978 the first capital to be inscribed in the UNESCO's cultural heritage list.
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  • Beach with vegetation, Floreana Island, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.
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  • Krakow Historic Centre in Poland.
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  • View of the town on Goree Island, off Cape Verde, an important selling-station for the Atlantic slave trade, Senegal, Africa.
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  • L'anse Aux Meadows National Historic Site in Newfoundland, Canada, Replicas Of Norse Houses From 1000 Years Ago.
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  • Part of the Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde in Colorado, showing dwellings and kivas. The kivas may be distinguished by their circular shape.
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  • Nahanni National Park Reserve, Northwest Territories, Canada.
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  • A rock-hewn church in Lalibela, Ethiopia.
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  • Semien mountains National Park with arid plateaux separated by valleys and rising to pinnacles, in Ethiopia.
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  • Interior of Wieliczka salt mine in Poland.
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  • Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.
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By Lily Rothman

Monday marks the 70th birthday of UNESCO, the United Nations agency that was signed into being in London on Nov. 16, 1945. The organization, which aims to promote educational, scientific and cultural collaboration between nations, is perhaps best known today for maintaining the World Heritage List. That list comprises natural and cultural properties that, according to the World Heritage Committee’s original operational guidelines from its establishment in 1977, “can be considered of outstanding universal value for the peoples of the world” and deserve protection.

These days, the List is a long one, with over 1,000 properties—but back in 1978, only these dozen sites made the first class of the list.

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Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com.

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