Heritage in East Asia
Ancient traditions meeting rapid modernization across diverse landscapes.
Sites in this Region
Showing 2 documented sites
Ancient Kyoto
Ancient Kyoto encompasses seventeen historic monuments across three cities — temples, shrines, palaces, and gardens that constitute Japan's most complete surviving expression of imperial court culture. Japan's imperial capital for over a thousand years, it received 50 million visitors in 2019 — ten times its resident population. The machiya, traditional wooden townhouses that once formed the domestic fabric of the city, are disappearing at approximately 2% per year, taking with them the living trades — textile dyeing, lacquerwork, confectionery — that give the monuments their cultural context.
Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China is not a single wall but a 21,196-kilometre system of walls, fortifications, watchtowers, and garrison stations built over more than two millennia. It is one of the greatest construction projects in human history, built at incalculable human cost. A 2012 government survey found that 74% of its Ming-era sections have been damaged or destroyed — most through the quiet, centuries-long process of rural communities using its bricks as a quarry.