In the Middle East, Iran won a listing for the historic bazaar in its northern city of Tabriz and a Sufi mystic shrine complex in Ardabil, as did Saudi Arabia for its former dynastic capital, the 15th-century Turaif District.
In Africa, the Ngorongoro natural park in Tanzania entered the list as a cultural treasure “because of the extraordinary record of human evolution at the site,” UNESCO said.
UNESCO’s meeting also updates its list of endangered beauty spots. On Friday it added Florida’s Everglades and Madagascar’s tropical forest to the 31 sites already on the list, which aims to boost environmental protection.
Earlier, it removed the Galapagos Islands from that list. Its consulting body, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, warned it was “premature” to declare the islands out of danger from threats including overfishing.
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