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Greece’s Mount Olympus, the ancient Japanese capitals of Asuka and Fujiwara, and the D-Day landing beaches in Normandy are among the newest sites added to the Unesco World Heritage List.
A committee has been reviewing dozens of nominations this week during a meeting in Busan, South Korea.
The addition of Mount Olympus – the mythical home of the Olympian gods – came after Greece campaigned for 12 years for the recognition.
The mountain, which rises 9,573 feet from a base near sea level, was believed to be the throne of Zeus, the king of the gods.
Evangelos Geroliolios, mayor of Dion-Olympus, a municipality at the foot of the mountain, said that inclusion on the World Heritage List “places greater obligations on our part to protect this environment”, citing the potential impact of increased tourism.
“We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to safeguarding Mount Olympus for the benefit of present and future generations,” said Georgios Koumoutsakos, Greece’s delegate to Unesco.
“As Greek mythology wisely reminds us, it is always best to remain on good terms with gods.”
The Normandy D-Day beaches where Allied forces landed on 6 June 1944 to fight the Nazis and liberate France have also become protected heritage sites.
In a statement, Unesco said that the beaches formed an “exceptional cultural landscape shaped both by the events of 1944 and by their enduring remembrance”, which therefore justified becoming a protected heritage site.
The landing, which saw 156,115 Allied troops land by sea or be airdropped behind German coastal defences, marked a decisive stage in the liberation of Europe in the Second World War.
Soldiers participating in the Normandy landings came from the United States, Britain, Canada, Belgium, Norway, Poland, Luxembourg, Greece, Czechoslovakia, New Zealand and Australia. Some 177 French commandos also took part.
The Normandy D-Day beaches are regularly the focus of commemorations featuring world leaders from the US, the UK, Canada and France.
The Japanese locations, in the country’s western prefecture of Nara, cover 19 archaeological sites from the 6th- to 8th-century capitals of Asuka and Fujiwara.
It was in those locations where Japan established its first centralised state, modelled after Chinese systems.
The sites preserve the largely buried remains of royal palaces, government offices, Buddhist temples and tombs from capitals that influenced the later capitals of Nara and Kyoto.
Japanese Culture Minister Kobayashi Shigeki thanked the committee for inscribing the Asuka-Fujiwara sites and said Japan reaffirms its commitment to “transmitting this valuable property to the future generations”.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, a Nara native, wrote on X that she hopes the World Heritage designation would boost tourism to the site.
Yoshiyuki Aihara, a Nara University archaeology professor, said that the sites are significant because they show how Japan’s ancient state was formed through influences from China and the Korean Peninsula.
“If you dig underneath these rice paddies about one metre, you start finding a stretch of ruins in this area, though that’s not easy for ordinary visitors to understand.”
South Sudan’s Boma-Badingilo Migratory Landscape was also added to the list. The area is home to one of the world’s largest land mammal migrations, and is the country’s first entry on the list.
The site encompasses vast wetlands, flood plains and savannas shaped by seasonal rainfall and flood dynamics, with an estimated six million white-eared kob, tiang and Mongalla gazelles moving across the landscape in response to changing environmental conditions.
It also provides habitat for elephants, lions, cheetahs and other wildlife while supporting various ethnic communities that have lived by herding, farming and fishing for centuries, according to Unesco.