Referring to
Philipp's review from earlier this week and Zoë's comments in today's blog post, I am wondering whether Al-Faw is one of the few, maybe even the only WHS, which is totally unvisitable (and thus 'untickable') at the moment (except for those in war zones of course). Even the photos on the UNESCO website seem to have been taken with a drone.
We have 10 other sites in the connection '
Not open to tourists', but most of them have workarounds:
- Replicas for Kazanlak, Pont d'Arc and Lascaux (the latter has alternative serial locations as well)
- For Surtsey, the surrounding waters are part of the core zone too and you can get close enough for a proper look by boat
- Stoclet: 'everybody' ticks it since you can see a clear Art Nouveau-style building from the pavement (although its OUV lies mostly inside and in the overall design including gardens as a Gesamtkunstwerk)
- Indian Sundarbans: the tourist areas in the buffer zone show a similar landscape, although not as pristine. The same argument may count for Chiribiquete.
- Papahanaumokuakea: you could have visited before 2012 or become a volunteer there. Still, No Go for now and similar to Al-Faw.
- Gough has an alternative visitable location in Inaccessible Island.
- The core zone of Los Katios can be entered by boat, and you may have some distant views of forests. I believe access with a special permit is also possible.
The specific problem with Al-Faw (as far as I can see from the reviews, I have not been there myself) is that you cannot enter the core zone AND cannot observe its OUV from behind the fence or in any other way (OUV here = "rich archaeological remains, including the flint tools of the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods; a huge number of funerary "avenues" of stone structures dating from the second half of the 3rd millennium to the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE and radiating out from the oasis; and numerous tumuli at the foothills.").