Founded in 1965, the New York-based international World Monuments Fund (WMF) is dedicated to preserving endangered monuments of cultural importance. To date, it has assisted more than 400 monuments and sites in some 80 countries. Central to its work is the WMF's biennial World Monuments Watch listing of 100 Most Endangered Sites.

First issued in 1996, the list has allocated 315 grants totalling $26 million to 157 watch sites in 62 countries, generating in the process an additional $59 million from other sources. Inclusion on the list is decided by an independent selection committee of experts which assesses each application. Criteria for selection is based on a site's archaeological, architectural and historic significance; the degree of urgency and the viability.

Two Irish sites, Headfort House in Kells, Co Meath, and Athassel Abbey in Co Tipperary, feature on the current list, along with two major Greek archaeological sites, the long lost classical city of Helike, and Palaikastro, the only surviving Minoan city. Also included in a strong European contingent dominated by church sites, is Ephesus at Selcuk, Turkey, one of five Turkish applicants, the Roman port of Trajan on the Tiber, as well as the ruins of the ancient city of Panticapaeum and dating from the 6th century BC, the Tyras-Belgorod Fortress both in the Ukraine.

There are five Chinese sites including sections of the Great Wall of China and the Puning Temple Statues at Chengde in Hebei Province. Peru's famous Túcume Archaeological site is listed, as is Bolivia's vulnerable Vallegrande Rock Art sites, Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis Brown House in Los Angeles, California and the North Family Shaker site at Mount Lebanon, New York in the US.

Australia features for the first time through the claims of the world's largest rock art complex, that of the Dampier Archipelago. Irish explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton's Expedition Hut on Cape Royds, Ross Island, is the first site in Antarctica to be listed.