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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, Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Mausoleum of Maussollos, Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

The Seven Wonders of the World refers generally to any number of lists which list popular sites for tourism. The oldest and most famous is the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, largely a tourist guide for travelers of the ancient world who wanted to see the most famous and well known sight-seeing destinations.

History

The earliest known version of the list was compiled in the 2nd century BC by Antipater of Sidon. The list that we know today was compiled in the Middle Ages—by which time many of the sites were no longer in existence—comprising the seven most impressive man-made monuments from the ancient world. Since the list came mostly from ancient Greek writings, only sites that would have been known and visited by the ancient Greeks were included.^[1]

The Seven Wonders were wonders because they were among the most popular tourist destinations; even as early as 1600 BC, tourist graffiti was scrawled 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 since 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.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

Listed in order of their construction, the seven wonders are:

Wonder	Date	Builder	Destroyed	Cause
Great Pyramid of Giza	2550 BC	Egyptians	still standing	still standing
Hanging Gardens of Babylon	600 BC	Babylonians	after 1st century BC	earthquake
Temple of Artemis at Ephesus	550 BC	Lydians, Greeks	356 BC	fire
Statue of Zeus at Olympia	435 BC	Greeks	5th-6th centuries AD	fire
Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus	351 BC	Persians, Greeks	by 1494 AD	earthquake
Colossus of Rhodes	292-280 BC	Hellenistic Greece	224 BC	earthquake
Lighthouse of Alexandria	3rd century BC	Hellenistic Egypt	1303-1480 AD	earthquake

Antipater's original list replaced the Lighthouse of Alexandria with the Ishtar Gate. 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.

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.

Modern wonders

The American Society of Civil Engineers compiled another list of wonders of the modern world ^[2]:

Wonder	Date Started	Date Finished	Locations
Channel Tunnel	December 1, 1987	May 6, 1994	Strait of Dover, Europe
CN Tower	February 6, 1973	June 26, 1976	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Empire State Building	January 22, 1930	May 1, 1931	New York, New York, USA
Golden Gate Bridge	January 5, 1933	May 27, 1937	San Francisco Bay, USA
Itaipu Dam	January, 1970	May 5, 1984	Paraná River, South America
Delta Works	1953	May 10, 1997	Netherlands, Europe
Panama Canal	January 1, 1880	January 7, 1914	Isthmus of Panama, Central America

Tourist travel wonders

The following list of the top seven tourist travel wonders (not including pilgrimages) was compiled by Hillman Wonders:^[3]

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 ^[4]:

Underwater wonders

This list of underwater wonders is of unknown origin but has been repeated sufficiently often to acquire a degree of notability:^[5] ^[6]

New Seven Wonders

As of 2006, there are two organizations promoting a "New Seven Wonders" list.

An initiative was started by a Swiss organization to choose the New Seven Wonders of the World from a selection of 200 existing monuments.^[7]

Also, the American national newspaper USA Today in conjunction with the American television show Good Morning America began revealing a list of "New Seven Wonders"^[8] as chosen by a panel of six judges.^[9] The list is being announced throughout the month of November 2006 as a Good Morning America special event. The following is a list of the confirmed new seven wonders as reported by the Good Morning America broadcasts.^[10]

Wonder	Location	Date Announced
Potala Palace	Lhasa, Tibet	November 9, 2006
Old City of Jerusalem	Jerusalem, Israel	November 10, 2006
Polar Ice Caps	Iceland	November 13, 2006
Hawaiian National Marine Monument	Hawaii, USA	November 14, 2006
The Internet	N/A	November 15, 2006
Mayan Pyramids of Chichen Itza	Yucatan, Mexico	November 16, 2006
The Serengeti and African Plains	Tanzania, Africa	November 17, 2006

Notes

External links and references

Seven Ancient Wonders
- The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World — an in-depth look from a professor of civil engineering at the University of South Florida
- Image of the Seven Wonder locations
- Parkin, Tim, Researching Ancient Wonders: A Research Guide, from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. - a collection of books and Internet resources with in-depth information on seven ancient wonders.
- Google Maps 7 Ancient Wonders of the World
Other Wonders
- Official web site for voting new wonders of the World
- The World's Top 100 Wonders - a list of architectural, engineering and natural wonders by Howard Hillman, a renowned travel writer.
- WonderClub.com - a "list of lists", with information about most wonders.
- Seven Wonders of the Modern World - a list of modern wonders compiled by the American Society of Civil Engineers
- Seven Wonders of Chicago - A list compiled by the Chicago Tribune and voted on by residents of the Chicagoland area.

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