Climate change is a phenomenon that is currently posing a big threat to the environment. As it turns out it might actually destroy some of the cultural treasures we have. A recent study shows that by the end of this century, cultural treasures such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Patriarchal Basilica of Aquileia and even the ancient metropolis at Carthage could be ruined by flooding and severe coastal erosion.
Of the 1092 cultural and natural wonders on the 2018 list of World Heritage sites, most are facing the threat of climate change. There has been very little research in the wake of this knowledge but a team of geographers is trying to remedy the situation. Lena Reimann, a geographer from Germany’s Kiel University led the team in assessing the threat flooding and erosion poses, as a result of the rising sea levels at 49 of the UNESCO heritage sites. The ones located in the Mediterranean were selected as they are believed to be facing the threat most. The sites specifically in the Mediterranean Low Elevation Coastal Zone were chosen for the research as they are just thirty feet above sea level. Among all of them, Italy has the greatest concentration sites with fifteen. After Italy, follows Croatia, Greece and then Tunisia.
1. Medina of Tunis
The Medina contains seven hundred monuments. It is a fascinating site that contains palaces, mosques, madrasas, fountains among others dating from the Almohad and Hafsid times.
The city’s structure and convoluted roadmap inspired colonizing writers and poets to spin tales of the dangerous Medina, land of anarchy and chaos, where ambushes are a daily occurrence. But when ethnologists arrived in the 1930s, it was revealed that the city structure of the Medina areas expresses highly sophisticated societal and cultural norms, and houses are built in accordance with the relationships between their inhabitants.