The New 7 Wonders of the World (plus the Pyramids) are Revealed

The New 7 Wonders Of The World Are Finally Revealed

After almost 100,000,000 votes have been cast, the new 7 wonders of the world were finally revealed.

During a spectacular event at the Estadio da Luz in Lisbon, Portugal, on the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the millenium 2000, the winners were announced.

The world-wide voting event was launched in 1999 by the Swiss film producer, adventurer and author Bernard Weber. It is said that he was further inspired to find the new 7 wonders of the world after the giant Buddha statues were destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Taj Majal

The orginal 7 wonders of the world were decided in about 200 BC, but now only one of them remain.

The original six wonders, (the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Olympian Statue of Zeus, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Pharos lighthouse off Alexandria and the Colossus of Rhodes) have all been lost in time.

The New 7 Wonders Lead To Controversy

The seventh wonder, the Pyramids of Giza, were originally included in the voting to find the new 7 wonders, but the Egyptians claimed that the whole voting competition was valueless because "It is not the masses who write history."

After their complaints, the organisers of the voting decided that the Pyramids should be set apart from the competition and would be listed as the 8th wonder of the modern world.

However, UNESCO's press officer, Christian Manhart, was not happy about the whole idea of the voting for new wonders, because, he said, it gave a negative message to each of the countries who had sites which had not been kept.

After starting with nearly 200 nominations in the competition, a final list of 21 possibles - including the Alhambra in Granada, Spain - were offered for voting. The short list was drawn up by a panel of architects and ex-UNESCO Frederico Mayor at the beginning of 2006.

And so the winning New 7 Wonders of the World were selected from these original 21 contenders

Acropolis in Athens
Alhambra in Granada
Angkor in Cambodia
Chichen Itza in Yucatan
Christ Redeemer in Rio de Janiero
Colosseum in Rome
Easter Island Statues in Chile
Eiffel Tower in Paris
Great Wall in China
Hagia Sophia in Istanbul
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto
Kremlin/St Basil in Moscow
Machu Picchu in Peru
Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany
Petra in Jordan
Pyramids of Giza in Egypt
Statue of Liberty in New York
Stonehenge in England
Sydney Opera House in Australia
Taj Mahal in Agra
Timbuktu in Mali

For more information and images about each entry, just click onto The new 7 wonders of the world.

The ALhambra - not one of the new 7 wonders of the world

After counting the millions of votes, The New 7 Wonders Of The World, as voted by the people, are:-

Brazil's statue of Christ the Redeemer
The Colosseum in Rome

The Great Wall of China
India's Taj Mahal
Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid

Peru's Machu Picchu, and
Petra in Jordan

And, of course, we have the 8th honorary wonder, the Pyramids of Giza.

And is the Alhambra a new wonder? No.

But, loving Granada as I do, even though I think the winners are all wonderful in their own ways, the Alhambra will always be in my top new 7 wonders of the world.

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