At the 47th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee held in Paris, France, a resolution was passed on the evening of the 11th, adding China's nominated ‘Western Xia Mausoleums’ to the World Heritage List.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of China's accession to the World Heritage Convention. As a result, the total number of world heritage sites in China has reached 60, ranking among the world's forefront.
The Western Xia Mausoleums nominated this time include four major man-made heritage elements: nine imperial mausoleums of the Western Xia dynasty, 271 attendant tombs, 32 flood-control relics, and a building foundation site covering over 50,000 square meters, which is preliminarily determined by archaeologists as a large site related to worship rituals.
In addition, more than 7,000 movable cultural relics are preserved in the Western Xia Mausoleums Site Museum. The entire site area reaches 38.99 square kilometers, making it the largest, highest-grade, and best-preserved Western Xia cultural heritage in existence. It provides irreplaceable special evidence for the nearly 200-year-long Western Xia dynasty and its royal lineage, established and continued by the Tangut people in Chinese history, giving proof of the Western Xia’s role as a crucial hub on the Silk Road from the 11th to 13th century.