Seven Wonders: Then and Now

Humanity loves a list. We rank everything: best albums, worst outfits, top ten dog breeds that secretly hate you. So it’s no surprise that we’ve also done it with landmarks. Not just any old pile of bricks, though. We’re talking about the Seven Wonders of the World. The ancient list is basically history’s version of a bragging rights poster. The modern list? More like a tourism wishlist curated by a committee that got a little too excited about dramatic backdrops and dramatic lighting.

Let’s start with the ancient ones. Picture a bunch of Greeks in togas arguing over architecture between bites of olives and jugs of wine. They were obsessed with proportion, gods, and building very large things using very small tools. They compiled what they considered the most astonishing constructions of their known world. Spoiler: most of them are now rubble or rumour. The only survivor is the Great Pyramid of Giza, standing there like a smug grandparent reminding you they did things the hard way, without cranes, concrete, or health and safety regulations.

The rest? Well, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are still missing. Historians aren’t even sure they existed. Maybe it was an early PR stunt, an ancient Instagram filter made real. The Statue of Zeus was a giant seated bloke made of ivory and gold, who stared blankly ahead until a fire ended his run—probably during a particularly wild toga party. The Temple of Artemis got rebuilt a few times, likely because it had the architectural equivalent of a target on its back. Then you’ve got the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, which sounds like an indie band from Bristol but was actually a very fancy tomb for a bloke called Mausolus. The Colossus of Rhodes? Big bronze chap straddling the harbour, supposedly. He stood proud for about as long as a limited edition iPhone battery. And let’s not forget the Lighthouse of Alexandria, guiding ancient ships with firelight, mirrors and good intentions, until earthquakes did what vandals and centuries could not.

What’s remarkable about the ancient Seven Wonders isn’t just the scale—it’s the mystery. No one’s entirely sure what they looked like. There are descriptions, sketches, second-hand accounts from travellers with a flair for embellishment, but no selfies, no architectural blueprints. They’re like mythological LinkedIn profiles: impressive, dramatic, and potentially exaggerated.

Now fast forward a few millennia. Humans are still building massive things to prove points. Only now we vote for them, like it’s Eurovision for monuments. The new Seven Wonders were crowned in 2007 after a global poll that felt part inspirational, part popularity contest, part social media experiment gone rogue. Some say the final list reflects global diversity. Others suspect it reflects how many people had internet access in 2006 and enough spare time to vote repeatedly.

Still, the line-up’s solid. The Great Wall of China stretches across mountains and deserts like a stone ribbon someone forgot to trim. It’s not visible from space, despite the persistent rumour that refuses to die, but it is visible from every school textbook ever printed and every documentary David Attenborough has ever considered narrating. Then there’s Petra, the ancient city in Jordan that looks like someone carved a classical mansion into the face of Mars. It’s dramatic, remote, and feels like a set piece for a film franchise that ran out of studio space.

Christ the Redeemer towers over Rio de Janeiro, arms outstretched like he’s about to give the city a gentle hug or applaud a samba parade. Some say he’s peaceful and serene; others think he looks like he’s bracing himself for carnival traffic or wondering what happened to his sandals. Meanwhile, Machu Picchu perches high in the Andes, looking like a postcard filtered through mystery and altitude sickness. The Incas built it without wheels, cranes, or any apparent sense of vertigo, all while cultivating potatoes and dodging colonialism.

Chichen Itza, in Mexico, offers mathematical perfection with its pyramid, El Castillo. Every angle and shadow tells a story, especially during the spring equinox when a serpent-shaped shadow slithers down the steps like an ancient PowerPoint animation. It’s the kind of thing that makes you question your career choices and your ability to measure anything correctly. In Italy, the Colosseum still stands as a monument to gladiators, drama, and the Roman Empire’s flair for spectacle. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the roar of the crowd—or at least the rumble of tourist guides shouting over each other in several languages while waving tiny flags.

And then there’s the Taj Mahal, gleaming white and romantically tragic. Built by a Mughal emperor for his late wife, it’s basically the world’s most beautiful overreaction to grief. It’s marble, it’s majestic, and it looks like it was designed by someone who asked, “How much symmetry is too much?” Poets adore it, photographers worship it, and pigeons treat it like any other large building with ledges.

Comparing the two lists is like comparing ancient poetry to modern memes. The old wonders emerged from myth, empire, and an obsession with gods and death. They were declarations of power, skill, and how much marble you could stack before gravity intervened and someone filed a divine complaint. The new wonders reflect a globalised world—more accessible, better documented, and occasionally crowd-sourced, complete with hashtags, reviews, and group discounts.

The ancient wonders feel like stories whispered across time. No one’s quite sure how accurate they are, but they’ve got that misty grandeur of legends half-remembered and badly translated. The new ones, on the other hand, come with drone footage, cinematic scores, and a handy gift shop. People still marvel at them, but now they also critique them online. “Too crowded, overpriced gelato,” says one. “Life-changing,” says another. The wonder is still there, only now it has to fight through queues, camera flashes, and overpriced souvenirs shaped like pyramids.

There’s something charming about how our sense of wonder hasn’t really changed. We’re still drawn to things that are bigger than us—cathedrals in the cliffs, statues in the clouds, walls that crawl over mountains and into our Instagram feeds. Maybe it’s a little narcissistic. Maybe it’s deeply human. We build, we admire, we label them “wonders”, and we queue up for selfies while someone sells bottled water nearby.

You could argue the modern list plays it a bit safe—nothing too controversial, nothing that requires diving equipment or camel convoys or dealing with potentially cranky local spirits. But that’s the world we live in. Accessibility matters. If you can’t reach it via Google Maps and a reasonably priced tour package, does it even count? The Hanging Gardens would probably struggle in the age of travel blogs: too elusive, not enough photo ops, and impossible to tag on Instagram.

One curious thing: no natural wonders made the cut. As if waterfalls, volcanoes, and glow-in-the-dark caves weren’t impressive enough. It’s like we only trust awe when we’ve laid the bricks ourselves or hired a civil engineer. There’s probably a metaphor in there about human ego and a fear of letting nature take the credit, but let’s not ruin the mood with philosophical introspection.

The Seven Wonders, old and new, remind us that across time and geography, people have always looked up—literally and figuratively. Whether it’s a pyramid built to touch the sky or a statue watching over a city, there’s a shared ambition in every block of stone and every arch of marble. It says: we were here, we mattered, and we really liked dramatic architecture and sweeping views.

Next time you visit one of them—ancient or modern—take a moment between the crowd-jostling and suncream application to really look. Not just at the stone or the size, but at what it says about the people who made it. Their hopes, their beliefs, their wildly impractical ideas that somehow, miraculously, worked. Ask yourself what future tourists will make of our era. Will someone nominate a skyscraper, a football stadium, or perhaps a pop-up museum of AI-generated art?

Because the real wonder, when you strip away the columns, carvings, and selfie sticks, isn’t the structure. It’s that someone dared to dream that big, and then somehow pulled it off without the help of YouTube tutorials, reinforced steel, or an overpriced marketing campaign. That, if nothing else, deserves a round of applause—and maybe a spot on the next list.