Harar Jugol (inscribed 2006) is sub-Saharan Africa’s most important Islamic city: 82 mosques and 102 shrines within 48 hectares — the highest mosque density in the world — plus the Arthur Rimbaud trading house and the nightly hyena-feeding ritual outside the 1551 Jugol wall. Ethiopia’s Lucy fossil site (Awash Valley, inscribed 1980) is accessible 200 km northwest.
Yayoi Kusama has died at ninety-seven. In 1966, uninvited, she covered the lawn beside the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale with 1,500 mirrored spheres and sold them for two dollars each, until the Biennale threw her out.
Djenné in central Mali is home to the world’s largest mud-brick building — its Great Mosque, rebuilt in 1907 in a tradition reaching back to the 13th century — and to Djenné-Djenno, an archaeological site occupied from 250 BCE that proved West African urbanism predates Arab contact by a thousand years. UNESCO inscribed the Old Towns of Djenné in 1988.
Timbuktu, at the southern edge of the Sahara in Mali, was a medieval centre of Islamic scholarship and trans-Saharan trade, home to three inscribed mosques and up to 300,000 manuscripts. In 2012, jihadists occupied the city, destroyed its Sufi mausolea, and threatened the manuscripts — most of which were covertly evacuated to safety in a remarkable rescue operation.
Shiraz is the gateway to Iran’s greatest Achaemenid sites: Persepolis (inscribed 1979) — Darius I’s 518 BCE ceremonial capital with its Apadana tribute-procession reliefs — and Pasargadae (inscribed 2004), the gabled limestone tomb of Cyrus the Great. In the city: Hafez’s garden tomb and the stained-glass Nasir ol-Molk Mosque.
Kilwa Kisiwani, off the southern Tanzanian coast, controlled the Indian Ocean gold trade for four centuries and was called one of the world’s most beautiful towns by Ibn Battuta in 1331. Its 14th-century coral mosque, the largest in East Africa, and the Husuni Kubwa palace stand as the visible remains of that medieval prosperity.
Great Zimbabwe, in Masvingo Province, is the largest ancient stone ruin in sub-Saharan Africa — a city that held up to 18,000 people, built without mortar by ancestors of the Shona between 1100 and 1450 CE. Colonial authorities denied its African origins for decades; the country named itself after the site at independence in 1980.
Lamu Old Town, UNESCO-inscribed since 2001, is the oldest continuously occupied Swahili settlement in East Africa, unchanged in street layout since the 14th century and navigated entirely by foot and donkey — no motor vehicles exist except one hospital vehicle. Its 23 documented carved door styles encode the cultural origin of each household’s owner, from Omani Arab merchant conventions to Gujarati Indian trader traditions.
The Island of Mozambique, UNESCO-inscribed since 1991, is a 3.5-kilometre coral island that served as the capital of Portuguese East Africa from 1507 to 1898, the main transit point of the Indian Ocean spice trade, and the origin of the country’s name. Its fort, begun in 1558 and never taken by force, contains a chapel from 1522 that is the oldest standing European building in sub-Saharan Africa.
Machu Picchu (inscribed 1983, mixed cultural and natural site) is the best-preserved Inca royal estate in the Americas: a 15th-century palace of Emperor Pachacuti at 2,430m in the cloud forest, with dry-stone solar temples, agricultural terraces, and the Intihuatana solar calendar stone. Cusco — the Inca imperial capital with Coricancha and Sacsayhuamán — is 80 km south.
