World Monuments Fund announces 2025 watch list for heritage sites facing major challenges – including the moon World Monuments Fund announces 2025 watch list for heritage sites facing major challenges – including the moon

The World Monuments Fund (WMF) has announced its 2025 watch list of heritage sites facing major challenges – and this year’s locations span five continents, and the Moon.

Announced biennially since 1996, the WMF aims to help historic places at risk by building awareness around their status and mobilising action. The list is nomination-based, with more than 200 sites submitted for consideration for 2025.

Challenges facing the 25 historic sites on the watch this year include climate change, rapid urbanisation, overtourism, conflict and natural disaster. In the case of the Moon, the WMF has noted that it is home to over 90 historic sites, including Tranquillity Base, the Apollo 11 landing site, and humanity’s first footprints on the surface, and that these must be protected as we enter a new era of space exploration.

Over the past three decades, the WMF has contributed more than US$120 million toward projects at nearly 350 Watch sites, and helped communities leverage an additional US$300 million from other sources.

The World Monuments Fund 2025 Watch list in full:

• Monasteries of the Drino Valley, Albania
• Cinema Studio Namibe, Angola
• Qhapaq Ñan, Andean Road System, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru
• Buddhist Grottoes of Maijishan and Yungang, China
• Swahili Coast Heritage Sites, Comoros, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania
• Chapel of the Sorbonne, France
• Serifos Historic Mining Landscape, Greece
• Bhuj Historic Water Systems, India
• Musi River Historic Buildings, India
• Noto Peninsula Heritage Sites, Japan
• Erdene Zuu Buddhist Monastery, Mongolia
• Jewish Heritage of Debdou, Morocco
• Chief Ogiamien’s House, Nigeria
• Gaza Historic Urban Fabric, Palestine
• Waru Waru Agricultural Fields, Peru
• Terracotta Sculptures of Alcobaça Monastery, Portugal
• Ruins of Old Belchite, Spain
• Water Reservoirs of the Tunis Medina, Tunisia
• Historic City of Antakya, Türkiye
• Kyiv Teacher’s House, Ukraine
• Belfast Assembly Rooms, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
• The Great Trading Path, United States
• Historic Lighthouses of Maine, United States
• Barotse Floodplain Cultural Landscape, Zambia
• The Moon

Analysis of the nominations identified a number of regional trends. In Europe and North America, insufficient funding and resources was the primary concern, while in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is climate change. For Asia and the Pacific, rapid urbanisation were cited as a challenge; for Latin America and the Caribbean; it was tourism, and for the Middle East and North Africa region, conflict and natural disaster emerged as a critical focus.

Over the next two years, the WMF will work to evaluate local needs and co-design strategies for advocacy, preservation and fundraising. As funds are raised, the WMF will also help develop a preservation project on-site with its local partners. So far, US$2 million has been secured in funding for the 2025 sites.

WMF President and CEO Bénédicte de Montlaur said, “The Watch underscores World Monuments Fund’s commitment to ensuring that heritage preservation not only honours the past but actively contributes to building a more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient future for communities around the world and beyond.”

He added, “The inclusion of the Moon underscores the universal need for proactive and cooperative strategies to protect heritage —whether on Earth or beyond — that reflect and safeguard our collective narrative.”

The only UK site on the list, Belfast’s Assembly Rooms, was built in 1769 as a gathering place for political discourse, business and entertainment. It has been the site of significant events including the 1786 defeat of a proposal to establish a Belfast-based company trading in enslaved Africans, and the celebrated 1792 harp assembly. In need of significant conservation, it is hoped the building will be transformed into the Museum of the Troubles and Peace.

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