At present, there are 489 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Europe, which are spread over 56 countries participating in the Council of Europe, with a significant proportion located within the Mediterranean region and landscapes. Despite their different articulations and specificities, these heritage sites are characterised by the Outstanding Universal Value attributed to them. The potential and challenges associated with the UNESCO label are also of relevance in this context; when viewed through the lens of tourism, the label can have a double meaning. On the one hand, it can indeed represent a significant socio-economic resource and contribute to the strengthening of heritage values and the sense of belonging of the communities living in a given area. Conversely, it can also produce a paradox, which emerges when the inscription of a site in the World Heritage List, by conferring upon it global visibility, leads to a substantial increase in tourist flows to the extent that it threatens the very heritage elements, both tangible and intangible, that UNESCO, by its mandate and through its designation, seeks to preserve. While this issue has been widely studied by sociologists, historians, geographers, anthropologists, and economists, it remains a relatively underexplored area in the field of architecture. As a discipline that envisions future scenarios, interprets and represents the past, and guides the transformation of places in the present, architecture can make a valuable theoretical and practical contribution to this debate. This premise was further explored in the research project “DeHETOUR_Designs for Heritage Tourism in UNESCO Sites”, which investigated the role of architectural design, at its various scales, to address the challenges and opportunities presented by the tourist utilisation of UNESCO sites. The contribution herein presents part of the outcomes of this research, the object of which is the mapping, taxonomic interpretation and study of architectural and landscape projects located within or on the margins of European UNESCO sites and aimed at their protection, use and enhancement.