I find these connections very problematic as you can broaden them to include new connections for each country with enough nominations.
An example -
Owned by the Israel National Park Authority: Biblical Tels, Incense Route Negev, Masada
Another -
Located in Italian Regional Capitals: Milan in Last Supper (Lombardy), Turin in Savoy Residences (Piedmont), Genoa (Liguria), Venice (Veneto), Naples (Campania), Rome (Lazio), Florence (Tuscany), Palermo in Villa del Causale (Sicily)
The same can be repeated for so many countries, which causes me the necessity of these connections.

I did suggest them partly provocatively in response to the introduction of the "Most beautiful villages of...."!!
BUT

a. The National Trust is an unusual "owner" - it is a charity and not part of the State. Merely to list sites "owned" by the State could indeed open up a large number of similar connections and I would agree that this should not be done. I guess we could "internationalise" this connection by making it "Owned by a Charity" and cover all countires

b. I have often thought that "Located in National Parks" should be a legitimate Connection encompassing all countries - but have never worked up the enthusiasm/time to identify them all! There are a number of official "Categories" for Natural areas which are usually shown on the documentation for Natural Inscriptions so IUCN considers it a significant piece of information. National Parks are Category II -
"Protected areas listed as IUCN Category II (National Park) by the World Conservation Union / International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN)."
This link shows all the categories (each of which could justify a Connection!)
http://www.iucn.org/about/work/programmes/pa/pa_products/wcpa_categories/pa_category1 a/
Note however that Cultural sites run as "National Parks" do not seem to be included. Herewith a list of Category II NPs
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:IUCN_Category_II&from=N

c. Perhaps just how many "regional capitals" a country has included could be of genuine interest - in showing how far it has spread the jam! Perhaps all connections relating to a single country should be put into a separate group subdivided by country?

Villa Romana del Casale is not situated in Palermo but in Piazza Armerina, in the province of Enna.

Thanks for the correction David.

Perhaps we could similarly internationalize the connection ¨located in a Mexican State Capital¨ to located in a regional capital thus including similar cases in different countries.

Not sure this is really a relevant connection. To me as a complete layman regarding UK law, it just seems that the UK has gone this particular way of having an officially independent charity owning historical sites - just as other countries have decided to leave it up to the state, or indeed to other bodies (e.g. in France, as far as I know, virtually all churches belong to the state, while in countries like Portugal or Germany some may actually still belong to the Churches).

Also: while countries like the UK, etc, may be quite easy to investigate in this respect, wouldn't it be simply to time-consuming to investigate the regulations of all other countries to find out whether a particular monument belongs to the state, or to whatever that state considers to be a charity?

Hi Khuft,
I am certainly not dying in a ditch over this one. As indicated above, the suggestion was stimulated by recent connections relating to "beautiful" villages in France/Italy. I might make exactly the same point regarding their inclusion as you do about the National Trust etc - "well that is the way the French choose to organise things -other countries do it differently".
"Les Plus Beaux Villages de France" seems to me partly to occupy a space analogous to that of the NT in England in terms of trying to help preservation outwith government (though it is run by mayors) but in a "French way" (except that it is also driven by more "grubby" tourism promotion objectives!). See
http://www.les-plus-beaux-villages-de-france.org/fr/qui-sommes-nous

Could I ask why a list of French sites belonging to a French Tourism promotion organisation should be more worthy of a "connection" than a list of English sites owned by an English Charitable organisation??? The big step was to allow a connection based on a National Organisation - once we do that we should allow connections based on organisations in other states which might "do things differently"!

Certainly charities in UK and elsewhere, are facilitated by the state in terms of it giving/allowing them certain tax advantages etc - otherwise they couldn't exist. But the National Trust isn't just an arm of the State which has been made to appear independent by that state.

The UK also has its quangos like English Heritage, Historic Scotland and CADW (Wales) which are funded by government grant, look after places OWNED by the government and report, albeit indirectly to maintain a somewhat fictional "arms length" status, to a government department.

The National Trust is the antithesis of government. Set up in 1895 by 3 philanthropists it raised/s money from rich and poor to purchase properties -and of course receives entrance fees etc. It is also left many properties in wills (certainly helped by government tax regulations which allow charitable donations to be taxed less oppressively than other bequests!).

Considering the new connection "US national monuments" I am now returning to our previous discussion regarding national connections. We used to have: owned by the national trust (UK), located in state capitals (Mexico), most beautiful villages of France and mots beautiful villages of Italy. We also agreed that if we open the door to national connections there might be too many of these national connections.
Maybe we should take Solivagant's old proposal to abstract away and internationalise them:
1) located in state capitals (for federations and autonomies),
2) owned by a charity,
3) located in a national park/monument.

This would allow to give further information, for example on the nature of the park, but still not confine us to arbitrary national divisions.

To take (1) as an example:
Wiki lists the following countries as federations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_state#List_of_constituents_by_federation
omitting those missing any WHS:
Argentina, Austria, BH, Brazil, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Iraq, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Sudan, Switzerland, USA, Venezuela, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, St Kitts and Nevis, UAE as well as Spain de facto.

Additionally, the following countries (excluding those of the first list and those with no WHS) have autonomous areas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_autonomous_areas_by_country
Azerbaijan, Chile, China, DR Congo, Fiji, France, Georgia, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Mauritius, Moldova, Nicaragua, Panama, PNG, Philippines, Portugal, Serbia, South Korea, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Uk and Uzbekistan.

Should we allow for a connection "located in the capital of a member state or an autonomous area"? I am not sure this is an absurd idea. I would estimate the number of sites on such a connection at about 30-50 which is less than we have in many other connections. For Germany for example we would only have Potsdam and Bremen and for Argentina none.

Well, we also have Berlin (a separate federal state) with Museum Island.

But Hamburg (Speicherstadt), Wiesbaden (part of Great Spas) and Stuttgart (Corbusier) are on the TL. Also, if I remember correctly, Erfurt and Mainz have been selected by Germany as future TL sites (for their Jewish heritage). Schwerin was also considered (for its historicist palace). So soon a majority of German state capitals may have a site.

Not to mention that Dresden also used to have a WHS.

All of which gives rise to another interesting question: are federal states ultimately prone to promote sites from their regional state capitals?

I was aware when I proposed this Connection of the potential for "flood gates" opening with all sorts of other intra-national connections - and indeed even of the earlier above debates!! If we have US National Monuments then why not have US National Parks (or Australian NPs etc etc) for instance? I thought that the US National Monument concept for cultural sites was of "particular" special interest because of its existence as an alternative to the more common NP status which many countries have (albeit with differing institutional rules) -
a. Its ability to be created directly by edict of POTUS
b. The intended role it had in protecting the heritage of indigenous groups which might otherwise be threatened if left to Congress!

BUT I agree that, if these are not considered strong enough reasons to treat US NMs as a special case it would be better to drop the US NM Connections rather than let it lead to a large number of other "National unique" connection proposals such as "WHS situated in an English county town" or the "Prefecture of a French department" etc etc!

The other suggestions for "internationalised" connections such as "WHS situated in a State Capital" or "Owned by a charity" or "Situated in an NP" should then be treated on their own merits
There are 2 potential problems
a. Is the definition capable of being framed specifically enough. When is a state a "member state of a "federation"? Is Edinburgh capital of a "member state" (or even an autonomous region!!!). One way wound this is certainly to use Wiki's own definition (it doesn't think so in the case of Edinburgh) - even though it might be full of "logical holes" (Spanish de facto states??)! But ,if it has too many holes is it adding much value?
b. How small does one grind?? "Head town of a second tier administrative unit" would be one way of internationalising "English county town" and "French Prefecture" together with similar units in other countries. Again does this add much value?

We do already have for instance
a. Situated in a Dependent Territory
b. Strict Nature Reserve
In both cases looking at a Connection related another subdivision (Autonomous Territory/Federated State in the first case and other IUCN categories in the second) could be said to simply be a logical next step - but along a slippery slope? I will leave up to the "Judge" to decide!!

I am against adding Connections that are:
- quite obvious (the rules say "not be self-evident")
- just try to categorize
- too numerous (we originally had between 3 and 20 entries as the ideal)

So State Capitals (and related examples mentioned above) would definitely be out for me. It's also more of a 2nd degree connection (WHS that are in a city that lies in a federated country). We're not connecting countries, only the specific features of WHS.

On the other issue, the "national" Connections. I am against those, though a few have crept in over the years. We have "In former GDR" with all German sites, to which I do not object as it does add some historical insight. So if used sparingly, I could agree to that. When adding the "US National Monuments" I was in doubt also, I don't find it distinctive enough.

The main information that is conveyed by the "US National Monuments" is the identification of these WHS as national monuments. The sites name on the world heritage list does not include the national monument moniker.

So I suppose the main value is introducing travelers and "listophiles" to the 110 National Monuments of the United States, which are not self-evident in the world heritage description of the site. This goes beyond the 59 National Parks which are self-evident for US WHS.

I don't know if this is distinctive enough either. I agree it does potentially open the door to several country lists based on national designations. I didn't make the connection, but I'm on the fence on this one.