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Mahabodhi added to World Heritage List

BUDAPEST, Friday (AFP) UNESCO's World Heritage committee named Mahabodhi Temple Complex at Bodhgaya, India, as one of the nine new sites of the world Heritage List.

Mahabodhi Temple Complex is one of the four holy places linked to the life of lord Buddha It was here, in the year 531 BC, that Buddha attained Enlightenment while sitting under the Bodhi Tree. The temple is surrounded by other holy places and is considered one of India's oldest existing temples..

The other eight new sites are:

- The Minaret of Jam (Afghanistan)

This minaret, built in 1194, is the second tallest in the world after Qutb Minar in New Delhi (India). It has elaborate brickwork with geometric and floral motifs and blue tiles, representing the artistic and architectural tradition of the Ghurid dynasty that ruled Afghanistan and northern India in the 12th and early 13th centuries. The site includes traces of an old Jewish cemetery and remains of fortifications.

- Upper Middle Rhine Valley (Germany)

This cultural landscape stretches 65 kilometres (40 miles) along the river Rhine. It includes about 60 towns and a wide range of landscapes and cultural properties, such as castles, abbeys, fortresses, terraced vineyards, copses, steep valleys and the Lorelei rock.

- The historic centres of Stralsund and Wismar (Germany)

Founded in the 13th century on the northwestern Baltic coast, these towns were major commercial centres of the Hanseatic League in the 14th and 15th centuries and are Germany's best remaining examples of this group of nearly 200 trading towns.

- Saint Catherine Area (Egypt)

This area of Sinai is of great spiritual importance for the three monotheistic religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The 5th-century Orthodox monastery of Saint Catherine is the only Byzantine Christian monument continuously in use since it was built 1,500 years ago at the foot of the 2,285-metre Mount Horeb (Jebel Musa in Arabic), where the Old Testament says Moses received the Tablets of the Law.

- Tokaji Wine Region (Hungary)

This cultural landscape displays the long tradition of wine production in northeastern Hungary, with the first vines planted in the 12th century. Its famous "Tokaji Aszu" wine, made from grapes left to rot on the vines, brought prosperity to the region. The site illustrates every aspect of Tokaji (or Tokay) wine production, whose quality has been strictly regulated for three centuries.

- Late Baroque Towns of the Val di Noto (Italy)

Caltagirone, Militello Val Di Catania, Catania, Modica, Noto, Palazzolo, Ragusa and Scicli are eight towns in Sicily all rebuilt since a 1693 earthquake that killed 93,000 people in a considerable joint operation if well-known architects and artists in the late Baroque style. The first anti-earthquake regulations were implemented in the rebuilding of Catania.

- Ancient Maya City of Calakmul (Campeche) (Mexico)

Calakmul, in the tropical forest of southern Mexico, is an exceptionally well-preserved Mayan city founded in about 300 BC. It was one of the region's two Mayan capitals for more than 12 centuries. The site includes two large pyramids as well as richly-decorated royal tombs.

- Historic Inner City of Paramaribo (Suriname)

The old Dutch colonial capital of Paramaribo is unique in South America. Founded in 1667, it grew over the centuries spreading south and north, retaining its original street plan and buildings that illustrate the gradual blending of Dutch architecture and use of local techniques and materials.

UNESCO also extended two sites already on the World Heritage List. It included Andrassy Avenue and the Millennium Underground to the site of the Banks of the Danube and the Buda Castle Quarter in Budapest (Hungary), and extended Costa Rica's Cocos Island National Park with the park's Marine Zone.

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