Holiday Destinations: The Seven Wonders Of The World
September 25, 2009 by Max Jones
Filed under Destinations
Mankind has always been fascinated with lists and the ancient Greeks were no different. They created a list of the world’s seven wonders but their list only considered the structures more or less around the Mediterranean region. To them, the number seven symbolized perfection and plenty.
The ancient Seven Wonders of the World included Great Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. To the Greeks, these were the most remarkable structures of their time.
Today only the Egyptian pyramids, which were also the oldest, survive from the original list of seven wonders.
Several lists were subsequently compiled to update the list of seven wonders, but each had its critics. New7Wonders Foundation tried to resolve the issue by conducting a global poll in which people could cast their vote by phone or through the Internet. On July 7, 2007, the results of the poll were released in Lisbon, Portugal. The Giza Pyramid was conferred the title of Honorary Candidate.
An unexpected name cropped up in the new list – Brazil’s statue of ‘Christ the Redeemer’. The statue was built as late as 1931 while all the other six wonders predate it by at least three centuries.
The other six wonders on the new list comprise the Inca ruins of isolated Machu Picchu, the spectacular Mayan pyramid of Chichen Itza in Mexico, the Great Wall of China that stretched across the country, the famous Colosseum in Rome, India’s white marble Taj Mahal in Agra and Jordan’s rose-coloured sandstone city in Petra.
What is beyond doubt is that each of the wonders on the list, along with the Pyramid of Giza, is worth a visit and should be part of your holiday travel at some point in time.
Spread across continents and showcasing diverse cultures, almost all the wonders have lived through battles, survived storms and are a testimony to man’s ingenuity, skill and craftsmanship.