Seven Wonders of the World
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This article is about the lists of world wonders. For other uses of the term Wonders of the World, see Wonders of the World (disambiguation).
The Seven Wonders of the World (or the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World) is a widely-known list of seven popular sites of classical antiquity. The list was largely a tourist guide for travelers of the ancient world who wanted to see the most famous and well known sight-seeing destinations.
Contents [hide]
1 History
2 The Seven Wonders
3 More recent lists
3.1 Modern wonders
3.2 Tourist travel wonders
3.3 Natural wonders
3.4 Underwater wonders
4 Alternative list
5 Notes
6 See also
7 External links and references
8 Further reading
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History
The earliest known version of the list was compiled in the 2nd century BC by Antipater of Sidon; it appears to be based on the guide-books popular among Hellenic sight-seers and only includes works located around the Mediterranean rim where sight-seers could typically travel safely. The Seven Wonders were wonders because they were among the most popular destinations, even as early as 1600 BC tourist graffiti was scawled on monuments in the Egyptian Valley of the Kings (by which time the Great Sphinx of Giza was already a thousand years old). It is notable that the Seven Wonders sites were all man-made, no natural features were included, they were not popular destinations. With the industrial revolution's impact on the environment and the resulting naturalism of the Romanticism movement, natural features have become tourist destinations in and of themselves and as such new "Seven Wonders" lists have been created that incorporate natural features.
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The Seven Wonders
Listed in order of their construction, the seven wonders are:
Wonder Date Builder Destroyed Cause
Great Pyramid of Giza 2550 BC Egyptians n/a n/a
Hanging Gardens of Babylon 600 BC Babylonians ? earthquake
Temple of Artemis at Ephesus 550 BC Anatolians 356 BC fire
Statue of Zeus at Olympia 435 BC Greeks ? fire
Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus 351 BC Hellenized Carians ? earthquake
Colossus of Rhodes 292-280 BC Hellenistic civilization 224 BC earthquake
Lighthouse of Alexandria 3rd century BC Hellenistic civilization ? earthquake
Antipater's original list replaced the Lighthouse of Alexandria with the Walls of Babylon. It wasn't until the 6th century AD that the list above was used. Of these wonders, the only one that has survived to the present day is the Great Pyramid of Giza. The existence of the Hanging Gardens has not been definitively proven. Records show that the other five wonders were destroyed by natural disasters. The Temple of Artemis and the Statue of Zeus were destroyed by fire, while the Lighthouse of Alexandria, Colossus, and Mausoleum of Maussollos, were destroyed by earthquakes.
A curious piece of trivia about the Seven Wonders is that all the sites of the seven wonders were located in the Ottoman Empire at one time or another.
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More recent lists
In the tradition of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, many other lists of wonders have been proposed, including both human feats of engineering and wonders of nature. However, these lists are rather informal, and there is no consensus on any particular list.
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Modern wonders
The American Society of Civil Engineers compiled another list of wonders of the modern world:
Channel Tunnel
CN Tower
Empire State Building
Golden Gate Bridge
Itaipu Dam
Delta Works
Panama Canal
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Tourist travel wonders
The following list of the top seven tourist travel wonders was compiled by Hillman Wonders:[1]
Great Pyramid of Giza
Great Wall of China
Taj Mahal
Serengeti Migration
Galapagos
Grand Canyon
Machu Picchu
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Natural wonders
Similar to the other lists of wonders, there is no consensus on a list of seven natural wonders of the world, as there has been debate over how large the list should be. One of the many lists was compiled by CNN [2]:
Grand Canyon
Great Barrier Reef
Harbor of Rio de Janeiro
Mount Everest
Northern Lights
Paricutín volcano
Victoria Falls
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Underwater wonders
This list of underwater wonders is of unknown origin but has been repeated sufficiently often to acquire a degree of notability:[3] [4]
Palau
Belize Barrier Reef
Great Barrier Reef
Deep-Sea Vents
Galapagos Islands
Lake Baikal
Northern Red Sea
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Alternative list
The New 7 Wonders foundation has launched a poll to decide another new list of 7 Wonders, with 21 sites on its shortlist, as follows[5]:
Acropolis (Athens, Greece)
Alhambra (Granada, Spain)
Angkor (Cambodia)
Chichen Itza (Yucatán, Mexico)
Christ Redeemer (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Colosseum (Rome, Italy)
Moai (Easter Island)
Eiffel Tower (Paris, France)
Great Wall (China)
Hagia Sophia (Istanbul, Turkey)
Kremlin (Moscow, Russia)
Kiyomizu Temple (Kyoto, Japan)
Machu Picchu (Peru)
Neuschwanstein Castle (Füssen, Germany)
Petra (Jordan)
Pyramids of Giza (Egypt)
Statue of Liberty (New York, United States)
Stonehenge (Amesbury, United Kingdom)
Sydney Opera House (Sydney, Australia)
Taj Mahal (Agra, India)
Timbuktu (Mali)