UNESCO adds Normandy's D-Day landing beaches to World Heritage List

 The D-Day landing beaches in Normandy were added to UNESCO's World Heritage List Sunday. The 80-kilometre stretch of coastline in northwest France served as the site for Allied forces' landing in Europe in June 1944, marking a decisive moment in the war against Nazi Germany and its fascist allies in Europe.   

 

 

World War II’s D-Day landing beaches in northern France were among the sites added to the World Heritage List on Sunday at a UN committee meeting in South Korea reviewing dozens of nominations.

The French designation covers the five Normandy landing beaches – Omaha, Utah, Sword, Gold and Juno – where more than 150,000 Allied troops came ashore on June 6, 1944, along with the Pointe du Hoc assault site, all central to the campaign to liberate Western Europe from Nazi occupation during World War II.  

 

 International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), which evaluates submissions to the heritage committee, said the sites contain extensive remnants, from German fortifications and bomb-scarred landscapes to Allied harbour structures and sunken vessels, marking an “event widely perceived as having enabled the return of freedom and heralded a lasting peace on the European continent”.  

 

 "This decision places a responsibility upon us," said Hervé Morin, president of the Normandy Region. 

 

 "It compels us to preserve this property, to protect it, to cherish it even more, and to promote its value," he added.  

 https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20260726-unesco-adds-normandy-d-day-landing-beaches-to-world-heritage-list

 A blockhaus is seen on the "Pointe du Hoc", a clifftop in Cricqueville-en-Bessin, on the French western Norman coast, on March 24, 2009