New seven wonders of the world

Other finalists[edit]

The other 13 finalists,^[14] chronologically were:

Wonder	Location	Image	Year
Stonehenge	Amesbury, United Kingdom		2400 BC
Acropolis of Athens	Athens, Greece		447 BC
Hagia Sophia	İstanbul, Turkey		537
Angkor Wat	Angkor, Cambodia		1113
Moai	Easter Island, Chile		1250
Timbuktu	Timbuktu, Mali		1327
Alhambra	Granada, Spain		1333
Red Square	Moscow, Russia		1561
Kiyomizu-dera	Kyoto, Japan		1633
Neuschwanstein	Füssen, Germany		1869
Statue of Liberty	New York City, United States		1886
Eiffel Tower	Paris, France		1887
Sydney Opera House	Sydney, Australia		1959

This article is about natural and constructed phenomena and structures of the world. For other uses of "Wonders of the World", see Wonders of the World (disambiguation).

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (from left to right, top to bottom): Great Pyramid of Giza, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (also known as the Mausoleum of Mausolus), Colossus of Rhodes, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria as depicted by 16th-century Dutch artist Maarten van Heemskerck.

Map of places listed in various Wonders of the World list (interactive map)

Various lists of the Wonders of the World have been compiled from antiquity to the present day, to catalogue the world's most spectacular natural wonders and human-built structures.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is the first known list of the most remarkable creations of classical antiquity; it was based on guidebooks popular among Hellenic sightseers and only includes works located around the Mediterranean rim and in Mesopotamia. The number seven was chosen because the Greeks believed it represented perfection and plenty, and because it was the number of the five planets known anciently, plus the sun and moon.^[1] Many similar lists have been made.

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

Main article: Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The Great Pyramid of Giza, the only wonder of the ancient world still in existence

The historian Herodotus (484 – c. 425 BC) and the scholar Callimachus of Cyrene (c. 305–240 BC), at the Museum of Alexandria, made early lists of seven wonders. Their writings have not survived, except as references.

The classic seven wonders were:

• 
  Great Pyramid of Giza, El Giza, Egypt the only one that still exists.
  
• 
  Colossus of Rhodes, in Rhodes, on the Greek island of the same name.
  
• 
  Hanging Gardens of Babylon, in Babylon, near present-day Hillah, Babil province, in Iraq.
  
• 
  Lighthouse of Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt.
  
• 
  Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, in Halicarnassus, Achaemenid Empire, modern day Turkey.
  
• 
  Statue of Zeus at Olympia, in Olympia, Greece.
  
• 
  Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, in Ephesus (near the modern town of Selçuk in present-day Turkey).
  

Lists from other eras

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, some writers wrote their own lists with names such as Wonders of the Middle Ages, Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages, Seven Wonders of the Medieval Mind, and Architectural Wonders of the Middle Ages. However, it is unlikely that these lists originated in the Middle Ages, because the word "medieval" was not invented until the Enlightenment-era, and the concept of a Middle Age did not become popular until the 16th century. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable refers to them as "later list[s]",^[2] suggesting the lists were created after the Middle Ages.

Many of the structures on these lists were built much earlier than the Medieval Ages but were well known.^[3][4]

Typically representative are:^[2][3][5][6]

• 
  Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa located in Alexandria, Egypt.
  
• 
  Colosseum in the centre of the city of Rome, Italy.
  
• 
  Great Wall of China built across the historical northern borders of China.
  
• 
  Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey.
  
• 
  Leaning Tower of Pisa in Pisa, Italy.
  
• 
  Porcelain Tower of Nanjing located on the south bank of external Qinhuai River in Nanjing, People's Republic of China.
  
• 
  Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England.
  

Other sites sometimes included on such lists:

• 
  Cairo Citadel^[7] is a medieval Islamic fortification in Cairo, Egypt.
  
• 
  Cluny Abbey^[8] in Cluny, Saône-et-Loire, France.
  
• 
  Ely Cathedral^[9] in Ely, Cambridgeshire, England.
  
• 
  Taj Mahal^[10] on the south bank of the Yamuna river in the India city of Agra.
  

Recent lists

Following in the tradition of the classical list, modern people and organisations have made their own lists of wonderful things ancient and modern. Some of the most notable lists are presented below.

American Society of Civil Engineers

CN Tower in Toronto, Canada

In 1994, the American Society of Civil Engineers compiled a list of Seven Wonders of the Modern World, paying tribute to the "greatest civil engineering achievements of the 20th century".^[11][12]