LONDON, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- Described as the "Rome of Britain", the UNESCO World Heritage city Canterbury faces the risk of being recklessly destroyed, SAVE Britain's Heritage, one of the country's leading heritage groups, warned Wednesday.
As a major tourism city 107 km south east of London, Canterbury is in danger of losing its beauty and history by allowing an increasing number of ugly and outsized developments within, or adjacent to, the city's historic core, still enclosed within its circuit of medieval walls, said the heritage group in a report.
The state of Canterbury is coming close to a national emergency, it added.
The city could follow Liverpool which recently was stripped of its World Heritage Site status, Ptolemy Dean, president of the Canterbury Society, also warned.
Latest available figured show tourism is worth nearly 700 million U.S. dollars a year to Canterbury's economy. The city attracted around 65 million tourists a year before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Canterbury is famed for its stunning cathedral, ancestral home of the Church of England, founded in the year 597 AD, with the current building dating back to 1070.
