TEHRAN –The UNESCO-designated Uramanat region in western Iran has considerable potential to become a tourist hub, the director of the Iranian National Commission for UNESCO has said.

By properly introducing this region and providing the necessary infrastructure, it will become a major tourist destination capable of attracting tourists from all over the world, CHTN quoted Hojjatollah Ayyubi as saying on Wednesday. 

UNESCO added the region to its list of World Heritage sites because of its beauty, grandeur, glory, antiquity, and its people’s art and culture, the official added. 

“As the region is now a World Heritage, people around the world can enjoy its beauty,” he noted. 

Stretched on the slopes of Sarvabad county at the heart of the Zagros Mountains, and shared between the provinces of Kordestan and Kermanshah in western Iran, the Uramanat cultural landscape embraces hundreds of villages, 106,000 hectares of land, and 303,000 hectares of surrounding properties.

It boasts dense and step-like rows of houses in a way that the roof of each house forms the yard of the upper one, a feature that adds to its charm and attractiveness.

Archaeological findings dating back about 40,000 years, caves and rock shelters, ancient paths and ways along the valleys, motifs and inscriptions, cemeteries, mounds, castles, settlements, and other historical evidence attest to the continuity of life in the Uramanat region from the Paleolithic to the present time.

According to the UN body, Uramanat is an exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition of the semi-nomadic agropastoral way of life of the Hawrami people, a Kurdish tribe that has resided in the Zagros Mountains for millennia. This outstanding cultural tradition is manifested in the ancestral practices of transhumance, the mode of seasonal living in Havars, steep-slope terraced agriculture, soil and water management, and traditional knowledge for planning and constructing steeply terraced villages, and rich diversity of intangible heritage, all reflecting a harmonious co-existence with nature.

The Islamic Republic expects to reap a bonanza from its numerous tourist spots such as bazaars, museums, mosques, bridges, bathhouses, madrasas, mausoleums, churches, towers, and mansions, of which 26 are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

ABU/AFM