Much of the construction of the Acropolis of Athens as we know it today began during the second half of the fifth century B.C. under the leadership of the statesman Pericles, as Athenians celebrated their victory over the Persians. The site chosen was a steep, rocky outcrop rising 511 feet above sea level in the basin of Athens; Acropolis, in Ancient Greek, is a portmanteau of the words akron (highest point) and polis (city). Inaccessibility, during those times of invasion, of war, was the very point.
Under Pericles, this rocky outcrop was transformed into a cultural complex shaped by esteemed architects (Iktinos, Kallikrates, Mnesikles) and sculptors (Pheidias, Alkamenes, Agorakritos). Made of white marble, these structures of incredible scale included Propylaea (the chief entrance to the sacred precinct), the Parthenon (the main shrine to Athena, patron goddess of the city), the Erechtheum (shrine to agricultural deities), and the Temple of Athena Nike (dedicated to Athena’s prowess in war). For practically 25 centuries, these monuments have survived myriad challenges: wars, fires, earthquakes, explosions.
The Acropolis has been an archaeological site since 1833, one year after the establishment of the modern Greek state. In 1987, the Acropolis of Athens was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, lauded for being a “supreme expression of the adaptation of architecture to a natural site” and an “outstanding example of an architectural ensemble illustrating significant historical phases.” Despite damages over time, the authenticity and integrity of the Acropolis have been well preserved.
Cory Lee, who uses a power wheelchair and runs the travel website Curb Free with Cory Lee, has been to 48 countries and all seven continents and has ridden a camel in the Sahara Desert and paraglided in the Swiss Alps. But until a few years ago, Lee was unable to visit the Acropolis. An elevator added in 2004 for the Athens Olympics was frequently out of service, and the marble paths at the top of the site were uneven.
In 2021, a new elevator on the northwest side of the Acropolis was installed to take visitors to the top of the archaeological site. The elevator, which fits two wheelchair users and their companions, needs 32 seconds to travel from the base of the site to the top—ascending at 90-degree angle while offering panoramic views of the city. Once at the Acropolis, the elevators open onto a gray concrete path. This path upgrade, too, is relatively new, replacing a worn cobbled walkway from the 1970s. Its build respects the stones underneath: The cement was poured on a membrane layered over the stones, and can easily be removed. The path was also widened from 16 feet to 60. (Architect Manolis Korres, in charge of restoration works on the Acropolis, said this expansion more closely mimics the width of the path 25 centuries ago, when thousands would arrive at the site for major festivals.)
“They were able to think outside of the box in terms of accessibility,” says Lee, who was diagnosed at the age of two with spinal muscular atrophy and who visited the Acropolis in June 2024. “Accessibility is definitely possible if you’re willing to be creative.”
In Greece, the move was controversial. More than 3,500 historians signed a petition against the installation of the pathways, and Despoina Koutsoumba, then president of the Association of Greek Archaeologists, said, “To me, it’s horrible. I think that Acropolis is really wounded by the cement corridors. . . . We have an archaeological site of great importance, and we take cement and we transform it into something brand-new. This is totally unacceptable.” Koutsoumba’s viewpoint was publicly countered by, among others, then Greek Culture and Sports Minister Lina Mendoni, who said, “The image of the Acropolis is the image of the country. A monument, which is a symbol of the Western civilization, becomes accessible to all.”
And Lee, who says 1 billion people on the planet are disabled, points to the numbers.
“Fifteen percent of the world needs some sort of accessibility. They may not all be wheelchair users, but a large portion of them are people with disabilities that need greater accessibility like I do. So if places want to continue to share their history and let legacies live on, they’re going to have to incorporate accessibility in some way.”
They were able to think outside of the box in terms of accessibility. Accessibility is definitely possible if you’re willing to be creative.
It can be said that people with disabilities are in a minority that is not truly a minority. Everyone at some point in time will have a disability, whether it’s due to aging or an accident. A more accessible world is simply a world better for everyone.
UNESCO’s World Heritage program dates to 1972; today, it is the world’s most popular cultural initiative. To be deemed a UNESCO World Heritage site, a nominated place must have “outstanding universal value” and meet at least 1 of 10 criteria across two categories: cultural and natural. The UNESCO World Heritage Committee, counseled by an independent panel of experts in history and education, selects sites, and the list is updated once a year. (UNESCO did not respond to repeated attempts for comment.)
As of June 2024, there are 1,199 UNESCO World Heritage sites spanning 168 countries. A majority of these (933) are cultural sites. A smaller number (227) are natural, and an even smaller number (39) are mixed, selected for both their cultural and natural properties. Italy has the most UNESCO World Heritage sites of any country, with 59, followed by China (57), Germany (52), France (52), Spain (50), India (42), and Mexico (35). The United States, like Japan and Iran, has 25.
A World Heritage designation can be a boon. In addition to international recognition and tourism, inscription means a site can receive technical and financial assistance from the World Heritage Fund toward its conservation, which is critical. But in recent years, bigger questions have emerged: How truly universal are these monuments in importance if not everyone has equal access to them? How can accessibility be improved without changing the heritage value of a place?
Kelly Narowski, who has a master’s degree in disability studies and a master’s degree in psychology, is a professional speaker. A former corporate travel agent, Narowski in 2023 completed traveling to 50 countries by the age of 50. She has been to 70 UNESCO World Heritage sites. “Most of these are the toughest, most challenging places I’ve been,” says Narowski, who uses a wheelchair and is paralyzed from the chest down. “And most of them, I could not go independently.”
Accessibility rules at UNESCO sites fall under the country’s purview and regulations, though a state is required under the UNESCO World Heritage Convention to give notice and receive approval before making “major” changes to a monument. (Per UNESCO’s 2023 operational guidelines, a minor change “does not have a significant impact on the extent of the property nor affects its Outstanding Universal Value.”) There is often more red tape around making changes to historic sites, and—as evidenced at the Acropolis—resistance.
“In the disability-rights world, this is what we call ‘historic hysteria’—this idea that adding a ramp ruins the historical ambience,” says Narowski. “If you want it to stay the same as it was in the 1600s, fine. So we shouldn’t have air-conditioning or plumbing? Running water?”
In the United States, the rules are different, thanks in large part to the 1990 passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), which Narowski calls “the most comprehensive, far-reaching disability rights law in the world” and a “law with teeth.” (Narowski completed the ADA Coordinator Certification program in 2015.) Narowski says the last dozen of her Title III lawsuits, brought to enforce the ADA, have involved buildings that are more than 100 years old.
Under the law, all public buildings must provide “reasonable” accommodations for the disabled, and modifications may be made to historic buildings as long as they comply with ADA Accessibility Guidelines (ADAAG) or Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards (UFAS). Should modifications based on these guidelines be impossible—because they “threaten” any historic or architectural integrity of a structure—program accessibility must be provided. In an ideal world, says disability design consultant Rosemarie Rossetti, PhD, we should be thinking about universal design. In other words, not just complying for compliance’s sake, but going beyond that: reflecting on narrow hallways and doors, door thresholds higher than one-fourth inch, thick carpeting, low lighting, and uneven surfaces—all considerations that speak to mobility challenges.
“Compliance is easy,” says Rossetti, a member of the Board of Directors of the Global Universal Design Commission, a nonprofit established to promote and develop universal design standards for buildings. “But we’re looking at the inclusion component. Let’s look at usability by all people, regardless of age, regardless of ability. Let’s look at how we can make the environment more convenient and more safe, as well as more accessible through its products and services.” In other words: How can we make more people feel more welcome?
Few American buildings have captured the public imagination like those of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose pioneering ideas around organic architecture led to Fallingwater in Pennsylvania and the Guggenheim in New York City.
Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin—Welsh for “shining brow”—was originally built in 1911 around a hilltop two and a half miles from the town of Spring Green, Wisconsin, amid the gentle swell and slopes of the Midwest prairie. Of this decision, the architect wrote, “I knew well that no house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and home should live together, each the happier for the other.”
In its entirety, the property, sitting on 800 acres, consisted of a house with a living room, a kitchen, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a sitting room, and a garden; a studio with a workroom and small apartment; and a service wing with stalls for horses, a garage, space designated for carriages and cows, and a milk room. After a former employee set fire to the property’s living quarters in 1914, Wright rebuilt the area that same year, then again after electrical damage in 1925. In 2019, it was named a UNESCO World Heritage site as part of eight major works by Lloyd Wright, the first World Heritage listing for the United States in the field of modern architecture. It has not been significantly altered since—but it has been made more accessible.
In 2024, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation completed the years-long renovation of the 1955 Hillside Theater, where Lloyd Wright had once played movies for the public. At the theater entrance it installed an accessible pathway. The theater restroom was revamped to include an accessible doorway and fixtures, and the foundation designated seating areas at the foyer level for wheelchair users. The basement of the theater space also saw the addition of an accessible restroom.
“Something like Taliesin—something that was deemed important enough to be nominated as part of a UNESCO World Heritage site—should be available to everybody,” says Erin Crowley, visitor experience manager at Taliesin. “We want to get as many people in to see Taliesin as possible.”
Much of the home at Taliesen cannot be altered, but accessibility to the house itself has been. On accessible tours, guests drive their own vehicles from the visitor center up to the back of the building, where they can enter the property via a movable ramp, through the kitchen instead of the front door. Since the rooms seen on tours in the residential wing are all on one level, guests using wheelchairs can take the same path through the rooms as nondisabled people can. All four of Taliesin’s public tours can be made accessible, thanks to movable metal ramps. Railings and benches were recently added around the property.
For Marina Girch Spicer, who had to relearn to walk after a spinal cord injury at 21, such improvements are key to visiting landmark sites. Today, Girch Spicer can walk unassisted, but her gait and balance are “off,” she says. “Though I have flown alone and traveled for work alone, I have good days and bad days and hope that when I’m traveling alone, they are good days,” she says. “So many places do not add railings to stairs. I understand aesthetics, but it creates a huge challenge in getting in and out of places I am going to. Often, if there isn’t a railing going into a building, I will just avoid it.”
Taliesin is working on offering self-guided tours, and it hopes to get wheelchair-accessible shuttles to move more people from the visitor center to the campus. Accessibility is something that can always be improved; still, at Taliesin, the intent is there. Says Crowley, “I think we’re going in the right direction.”
Machu Picchu has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1983. In 2007, it was deemed one of the new Seven Wonders of the World.
Anton Ivanov/Shutterstock
Much of the emphasis around accessibility at UNESCO World Heritage sites is tied to a country’s emphasis on accessibility at large: The more it is written into the fabric of a place and the human rights of a place, the less resistance to accessibility changes.
In a 2023 study from Valuable 500, a collection of 500 companies working to end disability exclusion, Singapore was named one of the most accessible cities in the world. For 30 years, the country has had a universal barrier-free accessibility code, and Singapore has committed to becoming an inclusive society by 2030. To date, more than 95 percent of pedestrian walkways, taxi stands, and bus shelters in Singapore are accessible to wheelchair users and travelers with sensory disabilities. All public transport stations are barrier-free; disabled and elderly residents have a card that can be tapped at pedestrian crossings to allow for more time to move across the road. In recent years, the Building and Construction Authority has established an accessibility fund that co-sponsors up to 80 percent of the construction costs for basic accessibility features such as ramps, lifts, and accessible toilets, encouraging owners of heritage buildings to make the necessary modifications.
The Singapore Botanic Gardens was established in 1859 and comprises 82 hectares. In 2015, UNESCO added the site to its list of World Heritage sites, calling it an “outstanding example of a British tropical botanic garden which has also played a key role in advances in scientific knowledge, particularly in the fields of tropical botany and horticulture.” It is the first and only tropical botanic garden on the list and the only World Heritage site in Singapore.
In November 2022, the botanic gardens debuted the HPL Canopy Link, a winding, 600-foot-long, 8-foot-wide bridge overlooking 30 species of bamboo and connecting two of the garden’s key areas. The bridge is nearly 23 feet high at its peak and—like many of the paths—was designed with a specific finishing and gradient to “cater to wheelchair users for ease of movement during their visits,” says Dennis Lim, coordinating director of visitor management and security at the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Throughout, the gardens are equipped with slopes, ramps, and elevators to ensure accessibility for the widest range of guests. Visitor centers at the gardens loan wheelchairs, and maps on the gardens’ website allow users to plan their trip before arriving. Lim also tells me that staff regularly undergo relevant accessibility training and that the gardens survey visitors to better understand their needs.
Though parts of the garden currently remain more challenging to wheelchair users because of the hilly terrain, more improvements are on the way. Taken together, the initiatives are simple, Lim says: “This [all] brings greenery closer to visitors and contributes to the gardens’ vision of connecting people with plants and encouraging a greater appreciation for Singapore’s natural heritage.”
Beyond researching a UNESCO World Heritage site’s accessibility via its website or a country’s accessibility regulations and policies independently, one of the best resources is community. Lee regularly details his experiences at UNESCO sites on his website, and services such as AccessNow let users contribute tips and intel about searchable destinations.
Founded in 2018 by Alvaro Silberstein and Camilo Navarro Bustos, Wheel the World is a multiservice travel company providing multiday tours, group tours, and information about accessible hotels and destinations. (Similar to AccessNow, the company uses crowdsourcing to gather accessibility information.) In 2020, it became the first organization to offer wheelchair-accessible tours of the UNESCO World Heritage site Machu Picchu in Peru. It still offers them today.
“It’s not that we made Machu Picchu accessible,” Silberstein says. “It’s that we figured out how to help people access a place that is very inaccessible, through the support of guides, logistics, and equipment.”
This, then, might be the key: acknowledging competing pressures while finding a way forward, says Korydon Smith, professor and chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Buffalo. Smith cites preservation goals and universal accessibility—plus divergence between building codes and traditions—as some of the myriad considerations to account for in the push toward greater accessibility. World Heritage sites, which host local communities and global travelers, must be especially mindful of them.
“It’s helpful to see both inclusive design and historic preservation as dynamic processes rather than fixed ends,” says Smith, an expert in inclusive design, who has written about how most of the design and planning of buildings and cities has historically been by and for those with economic and political power. “Heritage sites are often decades-long restoration and transformation projects; as new knowledge and techniques emerge, they need to be incorporated.”
It is a sentiment Silberstein also shared with me.
“People with disabilities were seen as incapable of anything,” says Silberstein, who has been paralyzed from the chest down since age 18. “There was thinking that ‘they’ should be kept apart from others. And it was this way of thinking that made us build a world full of barriers; [it’s] why we built such inaccessible places. It was an ignorant way of seeing humanity. Now we know that we were wrong.”
