Zhangye Colorful Hills is inscribed on the Tentative List of the UNESCO World Heritage List

On June 26, 2025, Zhangye Colored Hills was officially inscribed into the Tentative List of the UNESCO World Heritage List after being reviewed and recommended by the National Commission of the People’s Republic of China for UNESCO and reviewed and confirmed by the Culture Sector of the UNESCO World Heritage Center, marking breakthrough progress in heritage application.

Zhangye Colorful Hills is one of the core landscape areas of Zhangye UNESCO Global Geopark. It is a world-class geoheritage confirmed by the International Union of Geological Sciences, with a total area of 55 square kilometers. It consists of mudstone and sandy mudstone deposited in the Early Cretaceous Lake 135 million—96 million years ago. It presents colorful landscape characteristics due to different minerals, recording the change of climate environment in the Early Cretaceous and the history of weathering and denudation since the Cenozoic. Colorful Hills is iridescent, cross-layered, magnificent, and spectacular. Its colorful ornamental and large areas are rare in the world. It enjoys the honors of one of the Top 10 Geographical Wonders of the World, one of the 22 Most Impressive Sceneries in the World, one of the 25 Dream Travel Places in the World, and China's Most Beautiful Location, which have extremely high scientific research significance and aesthetic appreciation value.

Since the launch of the Zhangye Color Hills World Heritage Application in August 2022, the Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government have attached great importance to the application work and listed the heritage application work as the key task of the whole city for three consecutive years. Board for Zhangye Danxia Area (Zhangye Geopark Administration Bureau) carefully formulated the work plan according to the requirements of the Operational Guidelines of World Heritage Convention and the Preparatory Manual for World Heritage Declaration, and made great efforts to strengthen the work, and completed 21 tasks in 7 categories of heritage declaration with high quality.

After strict examination by relevant domestic and international institutions, Zhangye Colored Hills has been officially listed in the tentative list of the UNESCO World Heritage List.