Angel Falls, the tallest waterfall on land, drops from Auyán Tepui inside Venezuela's Canaima National Park

Background

Canaima National Park, decorated with flat-topped mountains, steep cliffs, and dramatic waterfalls, is one of the most notable landscapes in Venezuela. It spans more than 30,000 square kilometers (12,000 square miles), making it one of the largest parks in Venezuela.
Most of the park is covered by steep, flat-topped mountains known as tepuis, a word meaning house of the gods in the language of the native Pemón. More than 100 tepuis stand in the park, ranging 1,000 to 3,000 meters in height, and they are among the oldest geologic formations in South America.
The best known of them is the heart-shaped Auyán Tepui, home to the tallest waterfall on land. Angel Falls drops nearly 1,000 meters (3,300 feet), which NASA describes as 19 times higher than Niagara Falls. Like many tepuis, Auyán holds extensive cave systems, among them the Imawarì Yeuta quartzite caves.
Venezuela accepted the World Heritage Convention on 30 October 1990 and has three properties on the World Heritage List: Coro and its Port, inscribed in 1993, Canaima National Park in 1994 and the Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas in 2000. Two are cultural and Canaima National Park is the only natural one. Its tentative list includes Ciudad Bolivar in the narrowness of the Orinoco River.
Venezuela ratified the intangible heritage convention on 12 April 2007 and has 11 elements inscribed. They include Joropo in Venezuela, Venezuela's Dancing Devils of Corpus Christi, the Carnival of El Callao and La Parranda de San Pedro de Guarenas y Guatire on the Representative List, and the Mapoyo oral tradition and the Colombian-Venezuelan llano work songs on the Urgent Safeguarding List.