The Moon has been added to the World Monuments Watch (WMW) list of 25 endangered sites for 2025, alongside Gaza’s cultural heritage and terracotta sculptures in a Portuguese monastery. View on euronew

For the first time, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) has included the moon in its 2025 list of 25 at-risk cultural heritage sites. Also joining that list this year are Gaza, the Swahili Coast, and the Turkish city of Antakya.

Gaza Historic Urban Fabric, Palestine Unprecedented destruction ... can help the country weather increasingly severe droughts. • Historic City of Antakya, Türkiye Preservation efforts in the ancient city of Antakya are desperately needed to address ...

Belal Mortaja, Raghad Ezaat Hamouda and Rami Naser bring you into the heart of Gaza, where 15 months of Israeli airstrikes have decimated water, power and food sources. While the news of the long ...

Join the WMF's 2025 Watch to protect 25 endangered heritage sites worldwide, from the Moon to urban landscapes facing climate change.

Gaza Historic Urban Fabric ... its remains endure as a site of memory and reconciliation. • Historic City of Antakya, Türkiye Preservation efforts in the ancient city of Antakya are desperately ...

The preservation organization’s list, the World Monuments Watch, usually sticks to cultural heritage sites within Earth’s bounds. However, with humanity recently ramping up (uncrewed, for now) visits to the Moon, concerns have grown over what that means for the future of the culturally significant marks we’ve left on its surface.

The World Monuments Fund has been publishing its World Monuments Watch every two years since 1996 to build awareness and concern for endangered places. To-date, it’s funded $120 million towards preserving almost 350 sites around the globe.

It usually includes vulnerable cultural sites on Earth. This year marks the first selection since 2022, featuring Qhapaq Ñan, an ancient pre-Hispanic Andean road network. Additionally, the list includes Antakya in Turkey and the Noto peninsula in Japan, both of which have suffered damage from recent earthquakes.

According to the statement, "the Moon is included on the Watch to reflect the urgent need to recognize and preserve the artifacts that testify to humanity’s first steps beyond Earth"

That organization is the World Monuments Fund, which today announced the 25 sites on its annual World Monuments Watch. The sites were selected from over 200 nominations that underwent two review cycles before selection by an independent panel of experts. The Moon stands apart from the rest as a cultural heritage site that is not on Earth.

For the first time in 471 days, Palestinian medics in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip didn't report a single death from Israeli military action on Monday, as a tense ceasefire between Hamas and Israel ...