November 6th, 2009 | 
Author: Over half of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee’s 21 members were replaced last month at the group’s biannual session in Paris.
France, one of the founding members of the body, was one of those countries elected to serve a four year term on the committee. They will join existing members Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, Jordan, Nigeria and Sweden alongside countries including South Africa, Switzerland, Thailand and the UAE.
UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee is the body in charge of cataloguing, naming and conserving sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common heritage of humanity. There are over 890 properties on the world heritage list so far, with sites as varied as Stonehenge, the old walls of Jerusalem, or the Lascaux caves in the Dordogne region of France.
France is the country with the third highest number of protected World Heritage sites in Europe after Italy and Spain. It has 33 such historic attractions which form a draw for many people interested in taking a French holiday to see the country’s enormous cultural influence and history.
In 1979, the committee added several prehistoric sites in the Vézère valley of France to the World Heritage list. One of the most significant locations was the Lascaux caves in Dordogne, which features cave paintings estimated at over 16,000 years old.
Though visitors cannot visit the caves themselves due to the damage caused before they were closed to the public, in 1983 the ancient artwork was replicated in a nearby cave dubbed ‘Lascaux II’, which is a popular tourist attraction.
The original caves are seen as so significant and so vulnerable to damage that even scientific expeditions are limited to groups of two people or less, with access restricted to just a few days a month each year.
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