A Japanese silver mine and a Parthian fortress in Turkmenistan dating back to the 1600s were among four sites added to the United Nations World Heritage list today.
The UN's cultural organisation Unesco also inducted an ancient fort in India and the Sydney Opera House to the World Heritage list at a meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand.
A general view of the stone forest in Shilin Ethnic Yi Automonous county of Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan province.
Unesco said it had included the Iwami Ginzan Silver Mine, southwest of Japan's Honshu Island, which contains the remains of large scale mining, smelting and refining sites worked between the 16th and 20th centuries, because of its role in boosting Japan's economy.
In Turkmenistan, Unesco listed the Parthian Fortresses of Nisa, which contain remnants of two cities from the Parthian empire from the mid-third century BC to the third century AD.
"Archaeological excavations in two parts of the site have revealed richly decorated architecture, illustrative of domestic, state and religious functions," Unesco said.
In India, Unesco listed the Red Fort Complex, built for Mughal Emperor Shahjahan, who ruled between 1628 and 1658.
The palace, which gets its name from massive enclosing red sandstone walls, was designed to imitate paradise, as it was described in the Koran.
In Australia, Unesco said the Sydney Opera House, designed by Danish architect Joern Utzon, was a great artistic and architectural monument of the 20th century.
Mr Utzon was a largely unknown architect when his design for the Opera House was selected in 1957. But construction, on a point near the Sydney Harbour Bridge, was dogged by controversy, politics and arguments.
The Opera House was opened in 1973, but Mr Utzon has never seen the finished building. He left the country in early 1966 after a public row with the government, and a new team of architects was appointed to deliver the final version of his vision.