Palestinian Territories

A hillside of Roman-era agricultural terraces and spring-fed irrigation channels west of Jerusalem, still worked by the same families who have farmed here for generations, now threatened by the Israeli barrier and a proposed highway.

A Crusader-basilica built over the traditional birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem, approached through a medieval Pilgrimage Route that threads past olive-wood workshops into Manger Square.

A steep, enclosed old city whose ancient streets of workshops and artisan courts surround the Tomb of the Patriarchs, shared between Judaism and Islam and divided by a security barrier that fragments one of the world's oldest urban landscapes.

A Greek Orthodox monastery built into a cliff face above the Wadi Qelt gorge, accessible by a footpath through the narrow canyon, where the sound of water and the sight of green vegetation against desert cliffs create one of the most dramatic natural settings for a religious site in the Holy Land.

The biblical Samarian capital on a hill northwest of Nablus, where the ruins of Herod's Roman temple, a Byzantine cathedral and a Crusader cathedral accumulate in a quiet overgrown landscape that layers Nabataean, biblical, Roman, Byzantine and Crusader history into one site.

A low archaeological mound in the Jordan Valley containing the world's oldest known fortified walls and a Neolithic tower dating to 8000 BCE, layered with Canaanite, Israelite, Roman and Byzantine remains — one of the deepest continuous archaeological sequences on earth.