TEHRAN (Tasnim) � Iranian Vice-President and Head of the country's Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO) felicitated the nation on the inscription of Susa ancient city and cultural landscape of Maymand to UNESCO World Heritage List.

In a message on Sunday, Massoud Soltanifar referred to the inscription as a "great step to protect Iran's invaluable and outstanding heritage and to further introduce it to the world."

He further offered his congratulations to Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani, and the Iranian nation, particularly the people of Khuzestan and Kerman, where the two sites are located.

The ancient city of Susa and the Cultural Landscape of Maymand cave village were inscribed on Saturday to the UNESCO World Heritage List at the 39th session of the World Heritage Committee.

The session is currently being held in the German city of Bonn from June 28 to July 8.

The two cases were inscribed as the 18th and 19th sites to be entered into the World Heritage List from Iran.

Located in the south-west of Iran, in the lower Zagros Mountains, Susa encompasses a group of archaeological mounds rising on the eastern side of the Shavur River, as well as Ardeshir's palace, on the opposite bank of the river. The excavated architectural monuments include administrative, residential and palatial structures. Susa contains several layers of superimposed urban settlements in a continuous succession from the late 5th millennium BCE until the 13th century CE. The site bears exceptional testimony to the Elamite, Persian and Parthian cultural traditions, which have largely disappeared.

Maymand is also a self-contained, semi-arid area at the end of a valley at the southern extremity of Iran's central mountains. The villagers are semi-nomadic agro-pastoralists. They raise their animals on mountain pastures, living in temporary settlements in spring and autumn. During the winter months they live lower down the valley in cave dwellings carved out of the soft rock (kamar), an unusual form of housing in a dry, desert environment.� This cultural landscape is an example of a system that appears to have been more widespread in the past and involves the movement of people rather than animals.

By Tasnim News Agency