UNESCO Inscribed Twelve Maratha Forts, Eleven in Maharashtra and Gingee in Tamil Nadu, as India's 44th World Heritage Property on 11 July 2025

The Maratha Military Landscapes of India became a UNESCO World Heritage property on 11 July 2025, when the World Heritage Committee inscribed twelve forts at its 47th session in Paris. Eleven are in Maharashtra and one, Gingee, is in Tamil Nadu. The Ministry of Culture counts the property as India’s 44th.

The Maharashtra forts are Salher, Shivneri, Lohagad, Khanderi, Raigad, Rajgad, Pratapgad, Suvarnadurg, Panhala, Vijaydurg and Sindhudurg. The Committee inscribed them on criteria (iv) and (vi), and UNESCO’s property page puts the area inside the boundary at 1,577.63 hectares, with 96,500.43 hectares of buffer zone around it.

The decision in Paris

The Press Information Bureau’s release, posted at 10:08 pm Indian time on 11 July 2025, says the Committee took the decision that evening at UNESCO headquarters. Eighteen state parties backed the proposal, the release reports, in a discussion that ran 59 minutes. According to the Ministry of Culture, the file reached the Committee in January 2024, after a process of eighteen months that included a visit by ICOMOS, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, which advises UNESCO on cultural properties. That mission visited the forts from 24 September to 9 October 2024. Charaideo’s moidams in Assam were inscribed the year before, the release adds, and India now ranks sixth in the world by number of properties.

Twelve forts picked from more than 390

In its evaluation, ICOMOS records how the list was cut down. The State Party, as India is called in UNESCO’s papers, drew up a list of more than 390 forts and identified 266 of them as Maratha forts. From that list it picked sixty primary forts, then twenty-nine, then the twelve that were inscribed. The Ministry of Culture says the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) led the nomination, and the management plan adds that the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, Maharashtra prepared it together with the ASI.

Five kinds of fort

UNESCO’s own sorting puts Salher, Shivneri, Lohagad, Raigad, Rajgad and Gingee among the hill forts. Pratapgad, set in dense forest, is the hill-forest fort and Panhala, on a hill with a flat top, is the hill-plateau fort. Vijaydurg sits on the shoreline and is the coastal fort, while Khanderi, Suvarnadurg and Sindhudurg stand in the sea and are the island forts.

ICOMOS counts the same twelve another way, listing four maritime forts on the Konkan coast, Khanderi, Suvarnadurg, Sindhudurg and Vijaydurg, and eight hill forts. Seven of those are in the Sahyadri range (the Western Ghats) and Gingee is in the Eastern Ghats. Three of the components also take in a twin fort inside their boundaries: Salota beside Salher, Visapur beside Lohagad and Pawangad beside Panhala.

What UNESCO says the forts add up to

The Statement of Outstanding Universal Value, the text that explains why a property is on the List, calls the property a serial one, meaning twelve separate places inscribed as one. According to the text, the Marathas developed the system between the 17th and 19th centuries, and the Maratha military ideology took shape in the reign of Shivaji in the mid-17th century and ran through later reigns until Maratha rule ended in 1818. In the statement’s words, the forts are “the largest concentration of forts integrated within diverse landscapes.”

Under criterion (iv), the text says the forts were connected into a single, ranked defence system that used the shape of the ground, protecting trade through the Ghats and along the Konkan coast. For criterion (vi), it ties the forts to the idea of Swarajya, or self-rule, and to the motto on Shivaji’s royal seal at his 1674 coronation, “Mudra Bhadraya Rajate”, which UNESCO translates as “Shine only for the well-being of the people”. That idea, it adds, shaped Indian political consciousness and the anti-colonial movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.

In 2025 the Committee took note of a provisional version of the statement. At its 48th session in 2026 it adopted the final text, which is the version on UNESCO’s property page. The life of the man behind the system is told in the tuput pieces on Shivaji Maharaj and on the Peshwa-era expansion under Baji Rao I.

Two capitals and the forts of the Ghats

Rajgad, spread across ridges and spurs, was part of the fief of Shivaji’s father and served as his first capital, ICOMOS says. Administrative work stayed there until the capital moved to Raigad. Raigad was chosen as the second capital for its strategic and impregnable position, and ICOMOS says Shivaji reconstructed it in 1662 to include the king’s palace, a marketplace, a rainwater harvesting system and administrative buildings. ICOMOS calls it the administrative and ceremonial centre of the Maratha Kingdom, and says its design resisted multiple Mughal sieges until the fort was ceded to the British in 1818. Britannica records that Shivaji died there in April 1680.

Raigad also has strong archaeological potential that ICOMOS says has not been explored systematically. The management plan says the ASI has carried out recent excavations there that revealed several new structures, and that the Raigad Development Authority is conserving gateways and water bodies.

Salher, in the Dolbari sub-ranges of Nashik district, is the highest fort in the Western Ghats according to ICOMOS, and the management plan gives its elevation as 1,567 metres. Rock-cut monolithic gateways survive there. Mughal hands held it from 1638, and ICOMOS says Shivaji captured it in 1672 in the Battle of Salher and used it as a base for expanding northward.

Shivneri is known as the birthplace of Shivaji and has Buddhist caves and water cisterns. Lohagad stands on the Bor Pass, and ICOMOS dates Buddhist caves there to as early as 200 BCE. Shivaji recaptured Lohagad from the Mughals in 1670, and ICOMOS says the fort served as a treasury and food store during sieges.

Pratapgad was built in 1656 on Shivaji’s order, ICOMOS says, and controlled the Mahabaleshwar region. The fort played a role in the 1659 Battle of Pratapgad, in which Shivaji’s forces defeated Afzal Khan of the Bijapur Sultanate. People still live on the hill. Britannica says the Bijapur army sent against Shivaji in 1659 numbered 20,000.

Panhala dates to the 12th century and has seven bastions, rock-cut caves and a hidden well with a ventilation system. Shivaji captured it in 1659 and built the neighbouring Pawangad in 1673. Maratha and Mughal forces fought over it fiercely, ICOMOS says, and it later became a centre of Maratha administration in Kolhapur. For the wars with Aurangzeb after Shivaji’s death in 1680, see the piece on Sambhaji Maharaj.

Sindhudurg and the sea forts

Sindhudurg stands on the rocky Kurte Island and is ringed by a wall that follows the coastline. Shivaji built it in 1664 from local volcanic rock, ICOMOS says, and it became the headquarters of the Maratha navy, with a hidden semicircular entrance. PIB’s list of the forts places it in Sindhudurg district.

Suvarnadurg is an island fort that the Bijapur Sultanate built in the 16th century and that was reinforced under Shivaji in 1660. It protected the Konkan coast and maritime trade and served as a naval base and shipbuilding yard, ICOMOS says. Khanderi, built in 1679, lies between the Bombay islands and Janjira. Its job was to control sea routes near the Bombay and Chaul ports, and ICOMOS says it countered British dominance over commercial sea routes.

Originally built by the Shilaharas, Vijaydurg is a coastal fort on a promontory by the estuary of the Vaghotan River, with triple-layered walls and a harbour. Shivaji expanded it in the 17th century as a naval stronghold, ICOMOS says, and its dock and fortifications served Maratha naval activity in the 18th century. On the sea forts as a group, ICOMOS records the State Party’s argument that the Marathas, compared with the Muslim powers they had served, gave new weight to maritime and coastal control.

Gingee, the fort in Tamil Nadu

Gingee, in Villupuram district, is the one component outside Maharashtra. Three hillocks are joined by a fortified wall, and ICOMOS says the buildings mix Dravidian and Maratha styles. A Chola stronghold at the end of the 12th century, it was fought over in the 17th by the Golconda, Bijapur and Maratha powers. Shivaji’s forces captured it in 1677 and strengthened it, and ICOMOS says it became a base for Maratha operations in Tamil Nadu. The Mughals took it in 1698, and in the mid-18th century it passed to the French and then the British.

ICOMOS reports that India explained Gingee’s inclusion as a sign of Shivaji’s intention to extend control over the Karnataka plains and the Coromandel coast, for crop revenue and port control.

Who protects them

The twelve forts are managed jointly by the Centre and the state. UNESCO’s statement says eight, Shivneri, Lohagad, Raigad, Suvarnadurg, Panhala, Vijaydurg, Sindhudurg and Gingee, are protected by the ASI under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958 and the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972, with conservation guided by the National Conservation Policy, 2014. Four others, Salher, Rajgad, Khanderi and Pratapgad, are protected under the Maharashtra Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1960 and managed by the state’s Directorate of Archaeology and Museums.

An Apex Advisory Committee chaired by Maharashtra’s Chief Secretary oversees all twelve and meets every quarter. Each fort also has a district committee chaired by the District Collector. The management plan lists action plans for each fort for 2024 to 2030, and Gingee has a seat for the ASI’s Chennai Circle on the apex committee.

In a Lok Sabha reply on 4 August 2025, Culture Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat gave the funds allocated for conserving and maintaining centrally protected monuments under the ASI’s Mumbai Circle as Rs 15.35 crore in 2022-23, Rs 15.56 crore in 2023-24 and Rs 12.58 crore in 2024-25. Those figures cover every monument in the circle, not only the forts.

ICOMOS found the state of conservation uneven, from good to moderate. Substantial conservation work has gone into Shivneri, Rajgad, Raigad, Sindhudurg and Lohagad, it notes. Structural stability of walls, rainwater drainage and vegetation growth are the main problems on the hill forts, and salt spray, wind and waves affect the island and coastal ones.

What the advisers asked for and what comes next

ICOMOS’s evaluation, approved on 12 March 2025, recommended that the Committee defer the nomination. ICOMOS wanted it reworked around a ranked series that added the smaller secondary and tertiary forts then sitting in the buffer zones, with Khanderi, Suvarnadurg, Rajgad, Raigad and Pratapgad as a first phase. It noted that only three of the twelve forts were built entirely by the Marathas, since the rest were adapted from earlier works, and it questioned why some forts, Gingee among them, were chosen over others. It also said the State Party “deserves praise for undertaking such a challenging nomination”.

The Committee inscribed the property instead, on criteria (iv) and (vi). Its decision recommends that India consider protecting the secondary and tertiary forts in the buffer zones, prepare a heritage impact assessment for any projects near the forts, keep up regular maintenance, and weigh a second phase that would bring those forts into the boundaries. ICOMOS had also recommended an assessment of the ropeway at Raigad before any upgrade.

The Committee asked India to report on those recommendations by 1 December 2026, for review at its 49th session.