UNESCO World Heritage Sites List Scraper

Scrape the complete UNESCO World Heritage List — all ~1,250 inscribed sites with geo-coordinates, cultural/natural/mixed category, inscription criteria, danger status, and states parties. Data sourced directly from the official UNESCO World Heritage Centre XML feed.

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UNESCO World Heritage Sites List Scraper Features

• Returns all 1,200+ inscribed sites from the official UNESCO XML feed in a single run
• Optional: scrape the tentative list (~1,800 candidate sites) or both lists combined
• Filter either list by country (names or ISO codes) — for example the Mekong basin countries
• Tentative-list records carry country (ISO code and name), UNESCO region, coordinates, submission date and criteria where published
• Extracts 22 fields per site: name, category, region, lat/lon, inscription year, criteria codes, danger status, and more
• Criteria codes returned in standard UNESCO format: (i),(iii),(vi) — ready for filtering or display
• Danger status and year included — distinguishes currently-at-risk heritage from safe inscriptions
• Direct URLs to each site's UNESCO detail page and primary image
• States parties returned as a comma-separated list — easy to filter by country
• Pay-per-record pricing: $0.10 per run + $0.003 per record

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Who Uses UNESCO World Heritage Data?

• Travel content creators — Build destination guides, itineraries, and "top heritage sites by region" lists with verified UNESCO data
• Tourism boards and DMOs — Access authoritative site metadata, categories, and danger status for official travel marketing
• Education platforms — Populate lesson plans, quizzes, and encyclopedias with up-to-date heritage site information
• LLM and RAG knowledge bases — Ingest the full World Heritage List as a structured dataset for AI assistants and retrieval systems
• Researchers and NGOs — Analyze distribution of heritage sites by country, region, category, or danger status
• App developers — Build interactive heritage maps, country-by-country explorers, or cultural travel apps

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How UNESCO World Heritage Sites List Scraper Works

1. Select a list type: inscribed (default), tentative, or all.
2. The actor obtains a valid session for the UNESCO World Heritage Centre website, which is bot-protected.
3. The official XML feed is fetched — a single 2.4 MB document containing all site records.
4. Each <row> element is parsed into a structured record with all 17 fields.
5. Records stream into the Apify dataset. A full inscribed-list run (~1,250 sites) finishes in under two minutes.

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Input

{
    "maxItems": 100,
    "listType": "inscribed"
}

Field	Type	Default	Description
maxItems	integer	0 (all)	Maximum number of records to return. Set to 0 or omit for all sites.
listType	string	inscribed	Which list to scrape: inscribed (~1,250 sites), tentative (~1,800 candidate sites), or all (both combined).
countries	array	empty (all)	Only return sites in these countries. English names or ISO alpha-2 codes, e.g. ["Cambodia", "LA", "Vietnam"]. A value that matches no site is reported in the run log.

Example: tentative-list sites in the Mekong River basin

There is no "river basin" field in UNESCO's data, so the honest route is a country filter plus coordinates. Filter the tentative list to the six Mekong basin countries, then use latitude / longitude to keep the sites that lie on or near the river:

{
    "listType": "tentative",
    "countries": ["Cambodia", "Laos", "Myanmar", "Thailand", "Vietnam", "China"],
    "maxItems": 0
}

China is only partly in the basin and a few of the other countries' sites are far from the river, so check coordinates (about 78% of tentative records have them) against a basin boundary or a map before treating a site as "in the basin".

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Output

Each record in the dataset represents one UNESCO World Heritage Site.

{
    "site_id": 90,
    "name": "Abu Mena",
    "category": "Cultural",
    "short_description": "<p>The church, baptistry, basilicas, public buildings, streets...</p>",
    "states_parties": "Egypt",
    "region": "Arab States",
    "latitude": 30.8358333333,
    "longitude": 29.66666667,
    "date_inscribed": 1979,
    "criteria": "(iv)",
    "in_danger": true,
    "danger_listed_year": 2001,
    "extension": false,
    "transboundary": false,
    "detail_url": "https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/90",
    "image_url": "https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/sites/site_90.jpg",
    "source_id": "90"
}

Field	Type	Description
site_id	integer	Unique numeric site identifier assigned by UNESCO
name	string	Site name in English
category	string	Site category: Cultural, Natural, or Mixed
short_description	string	Official UNESCO short description (may contain HTML)
states_parties	string	Comma-separated list of countries (full names, e.g. France,Spain)
region	string	UNESCO world region (e.g. Europe and North America, Asia and the Pacific)
latitude	number	Site latitude in decimal degrees (primary component for transnational sites)
longitude	number	Site longitude in decimal degrees
date_inscribed	integer	Year the site was inscribed on the World Heritage List
criteria	string	Inscription criteria as a comma-separated string, e.g. (i),(iii),(vi)
in_danger	boolean	true if the site is on the List of World Heritage in Danger
danger_listed_year	integer	Year the site was added to the danger list (null if not in danger)
extension	boolean	true if this inscription was an extension of an earlier site
transboundary	boolean	true if the site spans multiple countries
detail_url	string	Full URL to the site's page on the UNESCO World Heritage Centre website
image_url	string	URL of the primary site image on the UNESCO website
source_id	string	Raw source identifier (UNESCO id for inscribed sites, Wikidata id for tentative)
list_type	string	inscribed or tentative
country_codes	string	Comma-separated ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes of the site's countries, e.g. KH
country_names	string	Comma-separated English country names
submission_date	string	Tentative list only: date the site was submitted (YYYY-MM-DD) when published
wikidata_id	string	Tentative list only: Wikidata item id of the site

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Notes

• For tentative-list sites, date_inscribed holds the submission year, not an inscription year (these sites are not yet inscribed).
• Tentative-list records have no category, short description or image; coordinates, criteria and submission date are filled for most but not all sites.
• Latitude/longitude values for transnational sites with multiple geographic components reflect the first component's coordinates.