The prestigious UNESCO World Heritage List meeting is currently underway in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. As the meeting concludes on Sept. 25, here is a compilation of historical landmarks that have successfully secured a spot on this esteemed list.

Turkish heritage

The ancient city of Gordion, which served as the capital of the Phrygian civilization and is located in Türkiye, has been officially inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Gordion is one of the most important historical centers in the ancient Near East, according to UNESCO’s website. The ancient site lies around 90 kilometers (56 miles) southwest of Ankara at the intersection of the great empires to the east, such as Assyrians, Babylonians, Hittites, and the western Greeks and Romans.

The Wooden Hypostyle Mosques of Medieval Anatolia were also added to the list.

The serial property in question comprises five hypostyle mosques constructed in Anatolia during the late 13th to mid-14th centuries.

What sets them apart is their distinctive structural design, featuring an outer masonry envelope and multiple rows of wooden interior columns (hypostyle) that support a flat wooden ceiling and the roof. These mosques are renowned for their exquisite woodcarving and craftsmanship, evident in their architecture, fixtures and furnishings.

The components are the Great Mosque in western Afyon province, the Great Mosque of Sivrihisar in central Eskişehir province, Ahi Şerafeddin (Aslanhane) Mosque in the nation’s capital of Ankara, Eşrefoğlu Mosque of Beyşehir district in central Konya province and Mahmut Bey Mosque of Kasabakoyu in northern Kastamonu province.

Rwanda’s genocide

UNESCO declared that it had officially recognized four of Rwanda’s genocide memorials as World Heritage Sites on Wednesday.

The sites include the Kigali Genocide Memorial in the capital city, the Murambi Genocide Memorial Center in southern Rwanda, the Nyamata Genocide Memorial in eastern Rwanda and the Bisesero Genocide Memorial in western Rwanda. According to survivors, each site bears distinctive characteristics showing the cruelty with which genocide victims were ruthlessly massacred.

The Kigali memorial site, the main one in the country, hosts the remains of 250,000 genocide victims found in the streets, houses and mass graves in Kigali and surrounding areas.

In the Nyamata church in eastern Rwanda, south of Kigali, about 45,000 people who sought refuge were massacred in one day.

The building was transformed into a memorial representative of other churches in which the victims of the genocide died, according to UNESCO.

The Bisesero site, on the other hand, commemorates the resistance led with traditional weapons, including spears, machetes and sticks by Tutsi against the genocide perpetrators.

World War I remembrance

UNESCO added World War I funerary and memorial locations across the Western Front to its prestigious World Heritage registry, expanding its list of landmarks of monumental importance.

The list includes sites the panel has deemed "of outstanding value to humanity," according to the agency, and deserving of "special protection" – including funding and international protection in times of war under the Geneva Convention.

The newly added sites stretch from Belgium’s north to eastern France, battle zones where the Allied forces clashed with the German army from 1914 to 1918. The array of sanctuaries ranges from expansive necropolises bearing multitudes of soldiers from different nationalities to humbler graveyards and individual monuments.

The incorporation of the World War I memorial grounds into the World Heritage List is meant to be a testimony to the legacy of the fallen soldiers, according to UNESCO.

Caravanserais

Many of Iran’s caravanserais, roadside rest stops for travelers along the country’s ancient trade routes, were added to the list.

The decision to register the 56 caravanserais, just a small percentage of the structures built in Iran, was made in Riyadh during the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee.

Caravanserais provided "shelter, food and water for caravans, pilgrims and other travelers," UNESCO said on its website.

Iran boasts more than 200 caravanserais on historic trade routes that traverse the country linking Asia and Europe, including the Silk Road.

"They are considered to be the most influential and valuable examples of the caravanserais of Iran, revealing a wide range of architectural styles, adaptation to climatic conditions and construction materials, spread across thousands of kilometers and built over many centuries," UNESCO said.

Among them are the caravanserais of Qasr-e Bahram near Semnan, Deyr-e Gachin near Qom and Anjireh Sangi near Yazd.

Tell al-Sultan

The prehistoric site of Tell al-Sultan, located near the occupied West Bank city of Jericho, was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

"The property proposed for nomination is the prehistoric archaeological site of Tell al-Sultan, located outside the antique site of Jericho," UNESCO’s assistant director general, Ernesto Ottone, said at a session held to inscribe the site.

"There are no Jewish or Christian remains at the site. It’s a place of prehistoric remains," a UNESCO diplomat told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media.

UNESCO’s listing shows that the Tell al-Sultan site is "an integral part of the diverse Palestinian heritage of exceptional human value," Palestinian Tourism Minister Rula Maayah, who was attending the meeting in Riyadh, said in a statement.

Given Tell al-Sultan’s "importance as the oldest fortified city in the world ... it deserves to be a World Heritage Site," she said.

Tell al-Sultan, which predates Egypt’s pyramids, is an oval-shaped tell, or mound, located in the Jordan Valley that contains the prehistoric deposits of human activity. "A permanent settlement had emerged here by the ninth to eighth millennium B.C. due to the fertile soil of the oasis and easy access to water," UNESCO said on its website.

UNESCO said the "skulls and statues found on the site" testify to cultic practices among the Neolithic population that lived there, while the early bronze age archaeological material shows signs of urban planning.

Germany’s Erfurt

A medieval Jewish town center in Germany’s historic city of Erfurt, home to one of Central Europe’s oldest synagogues, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Several buildings in the old town center were among sites noted by UNESCO, including a medieval ritual bath (mikveh) discovered by chance some 16 years ago, the so-called Stone House, owned by Jews and presumably built around 1250, and Erfurt’s Old Synagogue.

The listing marks the second Jewish site in Germany to be protected by UNESCO, an important step toward honoring the common roots of Judaism and Christianity in Germany and across Europe, said Germany’s ambassador to UNESCO, Kerstin Püschel.

Erfurt’s Old Synagogue is considered one of the oldest synagogues in Central Europe and has been carefully preserved. After a pogrom in the city in 1349 wiped out the entire Jewish community, the synagogue was first converted into a warehouse and later used as a restaurant and dance hall. The city assumes this is why the Nazis did not destroy the building.

Today, the Old Synagogue houses a museum whose earliest signs of construction date back to around 1094.

During the pogrom, the synagogue was set on fire and almost all of the approximately 1,000 members of the Jewish community died.

Island of Djerba

The Tunisian resort island of Djerba is on its list of World Heritage Sites because of its ancient ruins, whitewashed villages, mosques, churches and synagogues.

Djerba covers an area of 514 square kilometers (198 square miles) and is the largest island in North Africa. It combines desert areas bordering the Mediterranean with agricultural land growing palm and olive trees.

UNESCO’s website says, "The distinctive human settlement of Djerba demonstrates the way local people adapted their lifestyle to the conditions of their water-scarce natural environment."

Djerba is considered to be the mythological island in Homer’s "Odyssey," where Ulysses and his companions encounter the lotus-eaters. It was also featured in "Star Wars" as part of the planet Tatooine.

The island has Carthaginian and Roman ruins and also traditional houses known as "houch," which have an interior courtyard and ingenious systems to collect rainwater.

Djerba is known for its religious diversity. It has churches, synagogues including the Ghriba, the oldest in Africa, and fortified mosques from the Ibadi School of Islam, some of which are underground.

Native American heritage

A network of ancient American Indian ceremonial and burial mounds in Ohio described as "part cathedral, part cemetery, and part astronomical observatory" was added Tuesday to the list.

Preservationists, led by the Ohio History Connection, and indigenous tribes, many with ancestral ties to the state, pushed to recognize the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks for their good condition, distinct style and cultural significance – describing them as "masterpieces of human genius."

Constructed by American Indians between 2,000 and 1,600 years ago along central tributaries of the Ohio River, the earthworks hosted ceremonies that drew people from across the continent based on archaeological discoveries of raw materials from as far as the Rocky Mountains.

Elaborate ceremonialism linked to "the order and rhythms of the cosmos" is evident in the "beautiful ritual objects, spectacular offerings of religious icons and regalia" found at the sites, the application said. It said the mounds were "part cathedral, part cemetery and part astronomical observatory."

The eight sites comprising the earthworks are spread across 150 kilometers (90 miles) of what is present-day southern Ohio. They are noteworthy for their enormous scale, geometric precision, and astronomical breadth and accuracy, such as encoding all eight lunar standstills over an 18.6-year cycle.

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said the earthworks’ inclusion on the heritage list "will make this important part of American history known around the world."

Torture center in Argentina

A former clandestine detention and torture center in Argentina welcomed a decision by a United Nations conference to include it as a World Heritage Site.

The committee agreed to include the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory in the list of sites "considered to be of outstanding value to humanity," marking a rare instance in which a museum of memory related to recent history is designated to the list.

The former Navy School of Mechanics, known as ESMA, housed the most infamous illegal detention center that operated during Argentina’s last brutal military dictatorship that ruled from 1976 through 1983. It now serves as a museum and a larger site of memory, including offices for government agencies and human rights organizations.

"The Navy School of Mechanics conveyed the absolute worst aspects of state-sponsored terrorism," Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez said in a video message thanking UNESCO for the designation. "Memory must be kept alive ... so that no one in Argentina forgets or denies the horrors that were experienced there."