INDIA (Rajasthan) - Hill Forts of Rajasthan (UNESCO WHS)

Within the State of Rajasthan, six extensive and majestic hill forts together reflect the elaborate, fortified seats of power of Rajput princely states that flourished between the 8th and 18th centuries and their relative political independence. Enclosed within defensive walls are major urban centres, palaces, trading centres and other buildings including temples that often predate the fortifications within which developed an elaborate courtly culture that supported learning, music and the arts.

0691 INDIA (Rajasthan) - Chittorgarh Fort - part of Hill Forts of Rajasthan (UNESCO WHS)

0691 Vijay Stambha in Chittorgarh Fort

Chittorgarh Fort, sprawling on a 180m high hill, located on the plains of the valley drained by the Berach River, in the southern part of Rajasthan, is the largest fort in India. Built by the Mauryans during the 7th century AD, it was the capital of Mewar for 834 years, being ruled initially by Guhilot and later by Sisodias, the Suryavanshi clans of Chattari Rajputs. It was finally abandoned in 1568 after the siege of Emperor Akbar. In 1616, Jehangir returned in Chittor fort, but however it wasn't resettled, being refurbished only in 1905 during British Raj.

0690 GERMANY (Hamburg) - Gutenberghaus in Harburg

Between 12th century, when was first mentioned, and the first half of the 20th century, Harburg (Harburg upon Elbe since the 19th century) was a town in its own right. In 1937 it was incorporated into the city of Hamburg, now being a borough of the city, and a quarter in this borough. The borough Harburg lies on the southern shores of the river Elbe and covers parts of the port of Hamburg, residential and rural areas and some research institutes. In the postcard is the Gutenberg house, situated on the corner of the streets Julius Ludowieg and Harburg Rathaus. More I couldn't find about this building.

0689 FRANCE (Occitania) - Mont-Louis - part of Fortifications of Vauban (UNESCO WHS)

After the movement of the frontier between France and Spain as a result of the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), the Spaniards fortified the town of Puigcerdà to protect Cerdanya. When war broke out again, Spanish troops undertook raids across the frontier from their new fortess, so that king Louis XIV sent Vauban to the area in 1679 to ensure the frontier. The location he chose for the new fortress was just outside Cerdanya itself, at the head of the Aude and Tet valleys and guarding the routes to Toulouse and Perpignan.

0688 MOROCCO - A peddler of oranges

In Morocco, as in all the Mediterranean countries, oranges are among the fruits grown typically. Although the groves occupying relatively small areas, more than 20 varieties of oranges and mandarins are produced in this country, and the peddlers of oranges aren't rare in some area in Morocco.

0687 GERMANY (Baden-Württemberg) - The Swabian-Alemannic Fasnet in Freiburg

Fasnet (Fasnacht) is a carnival celebrated in the towns and villages of the Alpine areas of Austria, Southern Germany, the Black Forest, the area around Lake Constance, and in German-speaking France and Switzerland, wherever Alemannic tribes had settled. It is more a pagan affair, in which the old traditions of driving out winter have mingled with the pre-Lenten celebrations. The celebrants dress as spirits, demons, and witches, wearing heavy wooden masks, intricately carved and handed down from generation to generation. Recurring over and over are representations of the Wise Fool with smooth, serene, pale faces, scary witches with grotesque features and animal masks of all kinds, and masks of mythological characters that figure in local lore and history. The Zünfte (craftsmen's guilds) first began this custom. Today, only the name Narrenzunft (fools' guild), used for the clubs organizing the festivities, reminds us of this historical background.

0684 FRANCE (Normandy) - Mont Saint-Michel and its Bay (UNESCO WHS)

"Rising from a hazy expanse of sand and waves, Mont Saint-Michel appears like Man's defiance of the elements and of time. A rock lost in a landscape smoothed by the wind." I think this description, present in many tourist guides, is very suitable for this rocky tidal island located in Normandy, one kilometre off the country's northwestern coast, at the mouth of the Couesnon River near Avranches. The island's highest point is 92m above sea level.

0683 SPAIN (Catalonia) - Crypt at the Colònia Güell - part of Works of Antoni Gaudí (UNESCO WHS)

Crypt at the Colònia Güell is an unfinished work by Antoni Gaudí, built as a place of worship for the people in a manufacturing suburb in Santa Coloma de Cervelló, near Barcelona. Colònia Güell was the brainchild of Eusebi Güell i Bacigalupi, Count of Güell, the main patron and lifetime friend of Gaudí, but only the crypt was finished (between 1908 and 1916), because the textile industrialist lost the profits from his business, and the money ran out. This is one of the architect's most studied works and a precedent for many of the solutions used in Sagrada Familia.

0682 PORTUGAL (Faro) - A traditional street in a town in Algarve

Algarve, the southernmost region of mainland Portugal, now Faro District, had no institutions, special privileges, or autonomy, but was considered always one of the jewels of the Portuguese Crown. From  Afonso III (r. 1248-1279) until the proclamation of the Portuguese Republic (1910) all the Portuguese monarchs bore the title of King of Portugal and Algarve. It extend south of the Tagus valley to the southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula, the length of the south-facing coastline being approximately 155km, and beyond the Cape St. Vincent it stretches a further 50km to the north.

0681 ITALY (Campania) - Historic Centre of Naples (UNESCO WHS)

Naples is one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the world, Greek settlements being established there in the second millennium BC. Subsequent the city named Neápolis played a key role in the merging of Greek culture into Roman society. Following the decline of the Western Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire recaptured the city from the Ostrogoths, keeping them, with little interruption, until the early 9th century, when it gained the independence. In 1137 the Duchy of Naples came under Norman control, joining with the Kingdom of Sicily, which in 1197 went to the German House of Hohenstaufens. Becoming King of Sicily in 1266, the Angevin duke Charles I moved the capital from Palermo to Naples. In 1282 the Kingdom of Sicily was split in half and Naples served as the capital city of the Kingdom of Naples until 1816. Thereafter, in union with Sicily, it became the capital of the Two Sicilies until the unification of Italy in 1861.

0680 FRANCE (Occitania) - Villefranche-de-Conflent - part of Fortifications of Vauban (UNESCO WHS)

Located in the Conflent region of Catalonia (now in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in France), at the confluence of the Têt and Cady rivers, Villefranche-de-Conflent bars the road down the valley from Mont-Louis and Spain. The town is dominated by the mountainsides around it, which provide many ideal locations for enemy batteries to hammer the walls, so it was fortified for the beginning, since it was founded, in 1098. Captured by the French in 1654, it was part of the program of construction and improvement of outlying French defenses led by through 1707 by Marshal Vauban.

0679 MYANMAR (Kachin State) - Kachin girls on the bank of Mali River

The Kachin people (also known as Jingpho people) inhabit the Kachin Hills in northern Myanmar's Kachin State and neighbouring areas of China and India. They are actually an ethnic affinity of several tribal groups, known for their fierce independence, disciplined fighting skills, complex clan inter-relations, craftsmanship, herbal healing and jungle survival skills. In recent decades, their animist beliefs have been largely supplanted by their accelerated embrace of Christianity.

0677-0678 BULGARIA (Razgrad) - Thracian Tomb of Sveshtari (UNESCO WHS)

About Thracians I wrote when I presented the Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak, so I'll get straight to the point. One single remark I would like to make: the Danube was a barrier or a boundary only when the locals wanted that. I mean, for them, for the locals, this big river connecting central Europe to the Black Sea has been a source of food and a communication path ("Danube, Danube / Road without powder"), but in need they used it as line of defense or separation. Getae, for example, one of the most important Thracian tribes, stretched on one side and on the other of the river (in today's Romania and Bulgaria). Much later, the Cumans called a part of the territory once occupied by the Getae Deliorman (Crazy Forest), become Teleorman on the north of the Danube (in Romania) and Ludogorie on the south (in Bulgaria).

In 1982 in Ludogorie, at 2.5 km southwest of the village of Sveshtari, located 42 km northeast of Razgrad, was discovered in a mound a Getic tomb dating from the 3rd century BC. Built of limestone blocks, it consists of a dromos (corridor) and three premises (chambers), each covered by a separate vault. The decoration of the central chamber is exceptionally rich. Four different Doric and one Corinthian column support a frieze with triglyphs and metopes, between those there are ten caryatids with uplifted arms and above them is the picturesque scene of deification of the deceased ruler. A massive decorative stone door (naiskos) hid the burial bed from the eyes of the mortals. A second bed was designed for the wife.

0676 TAIWAN - Atayal women dancing

"Once upon a time, a stone named Pinspkan cracked apart and in it were three people. However, for an undisclosed reason, one of them decided to return back into the stone. Then there were two. The remaining one man and one woman then lived together for a very long time and they loved each other very much. Unfortunately, the man was too shy and would not approach the girl and tell her how he felt.The woman then came up with an idea because she could not bear to see how the man was too shy to confess to her. She firstly left her home and found some coal and with it, she blackened her face with it so she could pose as a different girl. After several days, she crept back into their home and the man mistook her for another girl and they lived happily ever after. Not long after, the couple bore children, fulfilling their mission of procreating the next generation."

0675 GERMANY (Bavaria) - The German Alpine Road at Sylvenstein Dam

The German Alpine Road (Deutsche Alpenstrasse) is a 430 km long stretch of roads snaking along the Austrian border, through the spectacular Alpine foothills of southern Bavaria, starting at Lindau on Lake Constance and ending at Berchtesgaden on Lake Königssee - just short of Salzburg. Dreamt up by Hitler in the 1920s and only recently fully completed, it is the most spectacular mountainous scenery in Germany, with ski resorts, more than 60 spa resorts, 21 mountain lakes, 25 castles, palaces and abbeys, not to mention the charming villages with their baroque, onion-domed churches, and a host of bridges, viaducts, tunnels and mountain passes.

0674 ITALY (Lombardy) - Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie with "The Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci (UNESCO WHS)

Santa Maria delle Grazie (Holy Mary of Grace) is a church and Dominican convent in Milan, included in the UNESCO World Heritage sites list. The convent was completed in 1469, at the order of Duke of Milan Francesco I Sforza, but the church took more time. The next duke, Ludovico Sforza (known also as Ludovico il Moro), decided to have the church as the Sforza family burial place and rebuild the cloister and the apse (attributed to Donato Bramante) which were completed after 1490.The church contains the mural of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, which is in the refectory of the convent and depicts the moment after Jesus tells his disciples that one of them will betray him.The Santa Maria delle Grazie is famous also thanks to its architectural history, which resulted in an intriguing combination of Gothic and Renaissance design.

0672 RUSSIA (Moscow) - Red Square - part of Kremlin and Red Square, Moscow (UNESCO WHS)

0672 Red Square, with Saint Basil's Cathedral and Spasskaya tower

Often considered the central square of Moscow, Red Square separates the Kremlin from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod. The name neither originates from the pigment of the surrounding bricks nor from the link between the colour red and communism. Rather, the name came about because the Russian word krasnaya, which means both "red" and "beautiful," was applied to a small area between St. Basil's Cathedral, the Spasskaya tower of the Kremlin, and the herald's platform called Lobnoe Mesto, and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich officially extended the name to the entire square.

0670 UZBEKISTAN (Surxondaryo) - A Kungrat old woman

Besides Uzbeks, in Uzbekistan live a number of ethnic minorities, among which are the Kungrats (also named Hongirat, Qongirat, Onggirat, Qongrat, Wangjila, Yongjilie, or Guangjila), who can be found mainly on the Surxondaryo valley, on extreme south-east of the country. The homeland of this tribe, one of the major divisions of the Mongols and Kazakhs, was located in the vicinity of Lake Hulun in northeastern Mongolia. Because the clans were never united, the tribe didn't known the military glory. Their greatest fame comes from the fact that Genghis Khan's mother, great grandmother, and first wife were all Kungrats.

0669 MEXICO (Chiapas) - Parachicos in the traditional January feast of Chiapa de Corzo (UNESCO ICH)

Located in the Grijalva River valley of the Chiapas highlands, Chiapa de Corzo is a small city, important of the archaeological point of view, because here were found the earliest inscribed date, the earliest form of hieroglyphic writing and the earliest Mesoamerican tomb burial. It's also the first Spanish city founded in Chiapas (1528), but after a while, because of the climate, many of the Spaniards moved into what is now San Cristóbal de las Casas. Chiapa was left for indigenous and Dominicans and called Chiapa de los Indios, San Cristobal being known as Chiapa de los Españoles.

0668 SPAIN (Catalonia) - Palau Güell - part of Works of Antoni Gaudí (UNESCO WHS)

This Palau Güell, one of the most luxurious of Barcelona, was commissioned to Antoni Gaudí by his main patron and lifetime friend, Eusebi Güell i Bacigalupi, Count of Güell, The architect started the project around 1880 and signed it in 1886, and the building, placed close to La Rambla, in an area  that in this period was the center of Barcelona, was developed between 1886 and 1888, although the decoration wouldn't finish until 1889. The palace was the Güell residence for a while, much later, in 1945, being sold by the count's daughter to the Diputació de Barcelona (Provincial government of Barcelona).