Back in 2007, more than a hundred million people around the globe cast a vote, and the New Seven Wonders of the World were crowned: the Great Wall of China, Petra, Christ the Redeemer, Machu Picchu, Chichén Itzá, the Colosseum, and the Taj Mahal. A glorious list. Not one of them is undeserving.
But a list of seven is a cruel thing. For every winner, there were showstoppers left standing in the wings: places that steal your breath just as thoroughly and somehow didn't make the final cut. I've never quite made my peace with it.
So today I'd love to take you on a little tour of the ones that got away — the landmarks, human-made and natural, that have every right to be called wonders of the world. (And if you're curious how the official winners actually stack up against one another, I had such fun reading how the New Seven Wonders rank — one traveller's spirited attempt to put them in order. Do pop back afterwards.)
Grab a cup of tea. This is a happy list.
Angkor Wat, Cambodia — The One That Came So Close
If any place was robbed, it was this one. Angkor Wat made the shortlist for the New Seven Wonders and narrowly missed the final seven, which still feels like a small heartbreak. It is the largest religious monument on the planet, built in the early 1100s, its five lotus-bud towers rising out of the Cambodian jungle like something dreamed rather than built. And it's only the crown of a far larger temple city — hundreds of shrines, moats and causeways spread across an area bigger than modern-day Paris, much of it still being gently reclaimed by the forest.
Go at dawn. Everyone tells you to, and everyone is right. As the sky turns from ink to rose, the towers appear upside down in the reflecting pool at your feet, and the whole crowd falls quiet at the same moment. Nearly a thousand years old, and it can still hush a hundred strangers where they stand. If that isn't a wonder, I don't know what is.
The Grand Canyon, USA — Two Billion Years in One View
Some wonders are carved by human hands. This one was carved by a river with nothing but time and patience. The Grand Canyon runs for 277 miles and drops more than a mile at its deepest, and the rock at the very bottom is close to two billion years old — some of the oldest exposed anywhere on Earth. It was the Colorado River that did all of this, grain by patient grain, and it's still quietly at work down there today.
Photographs, bless them, simply cannot cope. They flatten it. You have to stand at the rim at sunset and watch the light slide down the layers — ambers and rusts and deep bruised purples shifting by the minute — before you understand why people fall silent here too. Bring the whole family. Children stand at that railing and, for once, run clean out of words.
Iguazú Falls, Argentina & Brazil — Where Two Countries Share a Miracle
Here's a happy fact: Iguazú Falls was actually crowned one of the New Seven Wonders of Nature, so this one got the recognition it deserved — I simply couldn't leave it off. Straddling the border of Argentina and Brazil, it isn't a single waterfall but around 275 of them, curving through the rainforest in a horseshoe nearly two miles wide.
The showpiece is the Devil's Throat, a thundering U-shaped chasm where the water vanishes into a permanent cloud of mist and rainbows. Legend has it Eleanor Roosevelt took one look and murmured, "Poor Niagara." I think we can forgive her. Argentina gives you the walkways that carry you right out over the water; Brazil gives you the great sweeping panorama of the whole thing at once. Do both if you possibly can. Stand there with the spray on your face and butterflies drifting past, and you'll feel very small in the loveliest possible way.
The Sagrada FamÃlia, Spain — A Wonder Still Being Built
There's something wonderfully hopeful about a masterpiece that isn't finished yet. Antoni GaudÃ's basilica in Barcelona has been under construction since 1882, and after all these years its final towers are expected to be completed within the next few years. Imagine that — a building begun before the motorcar, still rising today.
Step inside and the noise of the city falls away. Gaudà designed the columns to branch like the trunks of a forest, and when the sun comes through the stained glass the whole interior fills with pools of coloured light: warm reds and golds along one wall, cool blues and greens along the other. It feels less like a room and more like standing inside a living thing. When it's finally finished, its central tower will make it the tallest church in the world — a record set entirely by hand, one careful stone at a time. A wonder in progress, which is rather a beautiful idea in itself.
Uluru, Australia — The Glowing Heart of a Continent
Rising alone from the red desert of Australia's Northern Territory, Uluru is a vast sandstone monolith more than 1,100 feet tall, with far more of it hidden beneath the ground than ever shows above. It is staggeringly old, and deeply sacred: for the Anangu people, its traditional custodians, this is a profoundly spiritual place, and visitors are now warmly asked to walk around it rather than climb it — a small act of respect that only adds to the magic.
Stay for sunset. As the light lowers, the rock seems to catch fire, glowing through ochre and amber into a deep burning red before it settles quietly into shadow. Those extraordinary colours come from iron in the sandstone slowly rusting over the ages, though I promise it feels nothing like rust when you're standing there watching it happen. Nobody hurries away. You simply stand there in the warm evening air, grateful to have seen it.
The Great Barrier Reef, Australia — A Wonder You Can See From Space
Not every wonder is made of stone. The Great Barrier Reef stretches more than 1,400 miles along the Queensland coast and is the largest living structure on the planet — so enormous that astronauts can pick it out from orbit. Built by billions of tiny coral polyps over thousands of years, it's home to a dazzle of turtles, clownfish, rays and gentle reef sharks. It shelters something like six hundred kinds of coral, and in the winter months whales pass through on their long journey north.
Slip on a snorkel in the shallows and a whole silent city opens up beneath you, all colour and drift and flicker. It's a tender wonder, this one — one we're all learning to look after a little better — which somehow makes visiting it feel like a privilege rather than a right. Be gentle with it, and it will take your breath clean away.
The Pyramids of Giza, Egypt — The Wonder That Started It All
I've saved a special one for last. The Pyramids of Giza hold a title none of the others can claim: they are the only surviving members of the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World — that famous list drawn up more than two thousand years ago. The Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes: all long gone. The pyramids simply… stayed.
Because of that unique standing, when the modern Seven Wonders were chosen in 2007, the Great Pyramid was given honorary status rather than being put to the public vote — a lovely gesture to spare the world's oldest wonder from having to compete for a place at all. Built around 4,500 years ago, it remained the tallest structure on Earth for thousands of years. To stand at its base and tip your head back is to feel the whole long sweep of human history in a single glance.
A Few Wonder-ful Questions
What are the official New Seven Wonders of the World? They're the Great Wall of China, Petra, Christ the Redeemer, Machu Picchu, Chichén Itzá, the Colosseum and the Taj Mahal — chosen by a worldwide public vote back in 2007.
Are the Pyramids of Giza one of the New Seven Wonders? Not quite — they were named an honorary wonder instead, in recognition of being the last survivor of the ancient list. A fitting exception for the oldest wonder of them all.
Isn't a "wonder of the world" the same as a "wonder of nature"? They're two lovely lists, actually. The man-made marvels have their seven, and there's a separate Seven Wonders of Nature (which is how Iguazú Falls earned its crown). Plenty of room for awe on both.
Wonder Was Never Meant to Fit on One List
Here's the thought I keep coming back to: the joy was never really in the ranking. Seven is simply the number we happened to land on, and the world has been generous enough to give us far more than seven places worth crossing an ocean for.
So take the official list as a beginning rather than an ending. Add a couple of these to your someday list — whether it's dawn breaking over Angkor Wat or the red glow of Uluru at dusk. Wonders, it turns out, are everywhere.
Post a Comment