UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE DEFINITION ?
A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a site that has been nominated for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's International World Heritage program. The program aims to catalogue and preserve sites of outstanding importance, either cultural or natural, to the common heritage of humankind.

See also UNESCO Creative Cities, describing a recently instituted program recognizing entire cities with some similar characteristics, and the UNESCO Global Geoparks Network , for parks of great geological interest.