The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has officially declared the Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park in the Judean Lowlands a World Heritage site, thereby bringing to eight the number of sites in Israel that hold this distinctive and prestigious certification.

Calling Beit Guvrin a “microcosm of the land of the caves”, UNESCO noted that the site, “situated on the crossroads of trade routes to Mesopotamia and Egypt, bears witness to the region’s tapestry of cultures and their evolution over more than 2,000 years.”

The archeological site contains about 3,500 underground chambers distributed among distinct complexes carved in the thick and homogenous soft chalk of the region. The quarried caves served as cisterns, oil presses, baths, dovecotes, stables, places of religious worship, hideaways and burial areas.