The great majority of the World Heritage sites are located on one of the smallest continents, namely Europe, with most of them west of the line St. Petersburg - Kiev - Istanbul. Countries like France, Germany, Spain and Italy dominate the list. The Netherlands counts six sites (as of 2005).

Europe has a long cultural tradition, extending roughly from classical antiquity to today's information society. This cultural development peaked in various periods in various areas, with the result that many areas were organised in very different periods and in very different ways. This is demonstrated by the contrast between the World Heritage site of the Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout (the province of Zuid-Holland; ca. 1740), which symbolises the ‘farmers' battle’ against water, and the landscape park of Muskau (ca. 1815-1845) along the current German-Polish border, which was realised through a private initiative of the nobility.

Pristine nature became relatively rare in Europe due to the high population density and so only a few sites of universal significance are inscribed on the European World Heritage List. Mont Perdu in the Spanish and French Pyrenees and a part of Lapland in Sweden are two examples of these rare sites. The cultural European sites, on the other hand, vary from exceptionally valuable prehistoric traces of habitation to unique church buildings and from natural landscapes to historical town centres. To name a few: Stonehenge (United Kingdom), the Cathedral of Aachen (Germany), the Kremlin and Red Square in Moscow (Russian Federation), a part of the Loire Valley (France) and the city centre of Venice (Italy).

(Photo: Stonehenge, Great Britain)