Île de Gorée, a 28-hectare car-free island two kilometres off Dakar, has been a Portuguese anchorage, Dutch fortification, French colonial town and — as one of West Africa’s major slave-trade nodes from the 15th to 19th centuries — the site of the Maison des Esclaves (1776) and its Doorway of No Return. Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1978, it has been visited by Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as a site of Atlantic slave-trade memory and diaspora pilgrimage.

Djémila (Roman Cuicul), inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1982, is a veteran military colony founded 96–98 CE at 900 metres altitude in the mountains of northeastern Algeria — preserved by the very isolation that eventually emptied the town. Its Arch of Caracalla (216 CE), Capitolium temple, theatre, Severan forum and early Christian basilica complex are among the most completely legible Roman urban ensembles in North Africa, described by Albert Camus as “the most beautiful Roman ruins in the world.”

Tipasa, on the Algerian coast 70 km west of Algiers, layers Phoenician trading post, Roman colony (founded 45 CE under Emperor Claudius) and early Christian necropolises across a pine-shaded promontory overlooking the sea. The Royal Mausoleum of Mauretania nearby is the almost-certain tomb of Cleopatra Selene II, last member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, while Albert Camus’s 1936 essay “Noces à Tipasa” made the ruins one of the most celebrated landscapes in French-language literature.

Gjirokastër, Albania’s “stone city,” preserves the Balkans’ finest ensemble of defensive Ottoman tower houses (kullë), a thirteenth-century castle expanded by Ali Pasha of Ioannina, a bazaar intact since the Ottoman period, and the literary memory of Ismail Kadare — co-inscribed with Berat by UNESCO in 2005.

Berat, the “City of a Thousand Windows,” preserves an exceptional ensemble of whitewashed Ottoman houses stacked above the Osum River gorge, a Byzantine castle with a continuously inhabited medieval quarter, and the finest collection of post-Byzantine icons in Albania — UNESCO-inscribed since 2005.

Derbent in Dagestan, claimed as Russia’s oldest city, preserves the sixth-century Sassanid Naryn-Kala Citadel and 3.5km of fortress walls that once sealed the Caspian Gate — a UNESCO World Heritage site of extraordinary strategic and historical depth at the crossroads of empires.

Bardejov in northeastern Slovakia preserves one of Central Europe’s finest intact Gothic market squares, an extraordinary collection of eleven late-Gothic winged altarpieces in St Egidius church, and a complete circuit of medieval walls — a UNESCO World Heritage site of quiet but exceptional quality.

Zamość, the “Pearl of the Renaissance,” was built from scratch in 1580 by Grand Chancellor Jan Zamoyski and designed by Italian architect Bernardo Morando — a complete Renaissance ideal city with a 100×100m arcaded market square, Mannerist cathedral and intact bastions, inscribed by UNESCO in 1992.

Zacatecas, founded 1546 after the discovery of the world’s most productive silver deposits, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1993. Its Cathedral facade is considered the finest Churrigueresque Baroque monument in Mexico; the Mina El Edén silver mine and the Cerro de la Bufa viewpoint complete the city’s heritage circuit, 1 hour by air from Mexico City.

Olinda, Pernambuco — a Baroque hilltop colonial town 6 km from Recife, founded 1535 and rebuilt after Dutch burning in 1630 — was the first Brazilian site inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List (1982). The Franciscan Convent of São Francisco (1585) is the oldest in Brazil; Olinda’s Frevo carnival and giant puppet figures are UNESCO Intangible Heritage.