THE WORLD HERITAGE PODIUM

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Today, 4th September, the information centre of the Netherlands's World Heritage Sites (officially called World Heritage Podium) is open in Amsterdam, in the same building of the city archive, in the former headquarter of the Dutch Trade Company with three stunning statues of former Dutch Indies Governors on the top.

The Netherlands has eight cultural world heritage and one natural heritage. These nine sites are introduced to the public in attractive and interactive ways. We could pull huge poster of each site. There are laptops on the floors where we can sit and browse more detail information. A lot of books in the boxes. There are tangible stuff to touch, too, like muds from the Wadden Sea (the natural world heritage site). Or if we are interested in learning the organization of the World Heritage Sites nomination from the Netherlands, we could find information here as well.

I am impressed with this public education effort. But more important than that, I learn a lot from perseverance of the Dutch to nominate a lot of things of such a relatively small country. I found out that one nomination documents could weight more than 10 kg papers and years of collecting data and information. There are another 10 properties submitted as the Tentative Lists of World Heritage Nominations.

For more info and pictures about the World Heritage Podium :
http://www.werelderfgoed.nl/podium/english.html

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