Beit Guvrin National Park inaugurated as UNESCO site

A ceremony held at the Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park on Tuesday officially inaugurated the park as Israel's eighth UNESCO World Heritage site.

Beit Guvrin-Maresha was voted a UNESCO site in June of last year, joining seven other Israeli world heritage sites: Masada; the Old City of Acre; the White City of Tel Aviv; the Negev incense route; the biblical tels [archaeological hills] of Megiddo, Hazor and Beersheba; the Bahai holy places in Haifa and the Western Galilee; and the Nahal Me'arot caves on Mount Carmel.

The Beit Guvrin caves, which cover 5 square kilometers (2 square miles), represent the Judean foothills' "land of a thousand caves," all man-made. The first caves in the area were dug beneath Tel Maresha in the ninth century BCE. The peak of active use occurred between the second and third centuries BCE. In the first few centuries of the Common Era, the caves that Beit Guvrin is most famous for were carved out, including the bell-shaped caves, the biggest of their kind in the world, that were carved in the sixth to eighth centuries C.E.

The caves feature limestone quarries, cisterns, olive presses, burial sites, ritual sites, dovecotes, stables, and more. However, for health reasons, the caves were not used as living quarters.

When the results of the vote were announced, Dr. Tzvika Tzuk, chief archaeologist of the Nature and Parks Authority, welcomed the decision.

"We are happy to see that professional opinion has declared the caves of Maresha and Beit Guvrin as a World Heritage site, adopted by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee," he said.

The Nature and Parks Authority announced that, in conjunction with various public and governmental institutions, it would undertake ongoing maintenance of the site.