An Edwardian swimming baths in Birmingham and a Yorkshire mansion that is one of the largest privately owned houses in Europe have each found a place on a list of the world’s most endangered sites, along with an Albanian prison, a giant law courts building in Brussels, an earthquake-shattered cemetery in Chile and Beirut’s coastal promenade that survived the war in Lebanon but is now threatened by hectic redevelopment.

The watch list, published every two years by the World Monuments Fund, a New York-based conservation charity, is famously eclectic and this year features 50 sites in 36 countries, from prehistoric ruins to 20th-century buildings. The shame of inclusion is often softened by lavish restoration grants backed by the charity’s partner, American Express.



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This year’s list includes the cultural heritage sites of an entire country – Nepal, following the devastating earthquakes earlier this year, which destroyed monuments including temples, monasteries and old houses in the heart of the capital Kathmandu, and left thousands of people still living in tents.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The remains of a collapsed temple in the Unesco world heritage site of Patan Durbar Square in Lalitpur, in Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley. Photograph: Omar Havana/Getty Images

In a month when more ancient sites in Palmyra in Syria have been reduced to rubble by Islamic State, one of the listed sites does not actually exist, but instead stands for many. Listed as the Unnamed Monument, it represents all the sites at risk from war or the threat of war, and the looting and neglect that follow.

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It includes sites such as Abusir el-Melek in Egypt, which is named as a symbol of the many looted sites across the Middle East since the Arab spring, but there are, the list’s compilers say, “simply too many sites at risk to be included individually on the watch, and no immediate hope for resolution”.

Natural disasters, looting, climate change, unsympathetic development, poverty and official neglect have brought other sites on to the list.

Bonnie Burnham, the WMF’s president, said she hoped making the list may help save many. She said: “The 2016 watch includes many extraordinary places that deserve to be celebrated because they represent high moments of human culture. Worldwide concern would strengthen our ability to save them.”

In Moscow, the rusting remains of an engineering marvel, the lacy steel structure of the Shukhov Tower, designed in 1922 by the engineer Vladimir Shukhov, was on the point of demolition until it was reprieved through a campaign by international architects, but it has made the list because its future is still uncertain.

Crumbling and abandoned, Spaç prison in Albania, a dreaded place until the fall of the communist party, deserves to be preserved as a place of remembrance, along with the few remaining second world war concentration camps in Italy, the WMF said.

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While some of the sites are remote and in poor regions, some are in prosperous, highly developed places: the list argues for the preservation of early 20th-century urban buildings in Tokyo’s old Tsukiji fish market, at risk after a decision to move the market.



The threat to Birmingham’s Moseley Road baths, which opened in 1907, is less dramatic than war or earthquake. Although one small pool remains open and in use, much of the ornate structure is empty and decaying. The complex is Grade II-listed, but the local authority has said it cannot afford to maintain it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wentworth Woodhouse in south Yorkshire, which is on the list due to its serious subsidence problems. Photograph: Alamy

The other site on the UK list still looks palatial, is Grade I-listed and remains open to the public. However, Wentworth Woodhouse near Rotherham in south Yorkshire, a mansion that is considerably larger than Buckingham Palace, is up for sale for about £8m after its last private owner died. The bargain price is literally undermined by the area’s coal mining legacy, with subsidence problems contributing to an estimated bill of £42m for urgently needed repairs.