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Cartagena de India
Places
Explore our cultural and natural heritage sites across the globe
Preserving Legacies is partnered with 10 cultural and natural heritage sites in 2023. These places of cultural significance, explored below, represent different heritage typologies, like archeological sites and living agricultural landscapes, and different climate threats, like sea level rise and extreme heat. While this diverse first cohort spans continents, cultures, and climate impacts, they all share a deep commitment to learn, connect, and build something new together.
Primary Sites
In the first year of Preserving Legacies, our two primary sites will go through a more robust program to link climate science and site conservation by enabling access to locally downscaled climate change models and organize a community-led workshop of the sites’ climate vulnerability as well as impacts on local communities.
Cadet Sites
In the first year of Preserving Legacies, eight cadet sites have been chosen to fully engage in climate heritage training and a peer-to-peer learning experience. Site custodians from these sites will shadow the full process at Petra and the Rice Terraces, including attending their workshops, to better prepare for their own assessments in 2024.
Colombia
Cartagena de India
The port, fortresses and group of monuments in Cartagena de India represent some of the most extreme examples of fortifications in South America from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Situated on the northern coast of Columbia on the Caribbean Sea, Cartagena has played a central role in global history as a trading centre and a key site in the European power struggle for control in the ‘New World’. Aside from the impressive fortifications, the site also contains palaces and grand residences organised into three historic neighbourhoods. It remains a living city with a vibrant population who live and work in the historic city. Rising sea levels and other climatic phenomena are irreparably affecting not only the heritage sites but also the intangible cultural traditions of the communities that inhabit the territory.