More Unesco cards

The unesco cards keep filling my mailbox and that makes me really happy. I'm not far from the 500 sites but i don't think the 500 will arrive still in 2010, i still need 29 cards to reach that milestone.

Tine helped with 3 sites, Þingvellir National Park in Iceland; Kakadu National Park in Australia and the Ksar of Ait-Ben-Haddou in Morocco. The card from Uzbekistan is also from an Unesco site but i already had that one.

With this card from Iceland i've now both unesco sites from this country.

"Þingvellir (Thingvellir) is the National Park where the Althing – an open-air assembly, which represented the whole of Iceland – was established in 930 and continued to meet until 1798. Over two weeks a year, the assembly set laws – seen as a covenant between free men – and settled disputes. The Althing has deep historical and symbolic associations for the people of Iceland. The property includes the Þingvellir National Park and the remains of the Althing itself: fragments of around 50 booths built from turf and stone. Remains from the 10th century are thought to be buried underground. The site also includes remains of agricultural use from the 18th and 19th centuries. The park shows evidence of the way the landscape was husbanded over 1,000 years." - in: www.whc.unesco.org/en/list/1152

The Kakadu National Park is in the Northern Territory of Australia, 171 km southeast of Darwin. It is the size of Slovenia, about one-third the size of Tasmania, or nearly half the size of Switzerland.

"This unique archaeological and ethnological reserve, located in the Northern Territory, has been inhabited continuously for more than 40,000 years. The cave paintings, rock carvings and archaeological sites record the skills and way of life of the region’s inhabitants, from the hunter-gatherers of prehistoric times to the Aboriginal people still living there. It is a unique example of a complex of ecosystems, including tidal flats, floodplains, lowlands and plateaux, and provides a habitat for a wide range of rare or endemic species of plants and animals." - in: www.whc.unesco.org/en/list/147
The card shows the Twin Falls.

"Ksar of Ait-Ben-Haddou is a 'fortified city' along the former catavan route between the Sahara and Marrakech in present-day Morocco. It is situated in Souss-Massa-Draã on a hill along the Ounila River and has some beautiful examples of kasbahs, which unfortunately sustain damage during each rainstorm. Most of the town's inhabitants now live in a more modern village at the other side of the river; however, ten families still live within the ksar.

Aït-Ben-Haddou has been a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1987." - in: wikipedia

I chose this card because it was marked as being from Bukhara but after all the card is from Samarkand and i already had a card from this site. However, that's not a big issue.

This Madrasa on the card, Tilla-Kori Madrasa, is one of the three madrasas of the Registan, a square in Samarkand.

The construction of this madrasa started in 1646. The works continued 14 years and were completed in 1660. The name Tilla-Kori Madrasa means “finished with gold.” Besides its main function of teaching students, the Tilla-Kori Madrasa was used as a synodic mosque.