New wonders of the world revealed

Among the notable places left out were the Acropolis in Athens, Greece; the statues of Easter Island in Chile; Cambodia’s temples of Angkor; Turkey’s Hagia Sophia; and the Kremlin and St Basil’s cathedral in Russia.

Campaign

Egypt argued that the Great Pyramids of Giza, the only surviving structures from the original seven wonders of the ancient world, had already achieved wondrous status.

 

Organisers agreed to kept their status as an unchallenged eight wonder, in addition to the new seven.

The campaign to pick the seven new wonders was started in 1999 by Swiss adventurer, Bernard Weber.

 

His privately-funded organisation, the New 7 Wonders Foundation, received almost 200 nominations from around the world.

 

Jordan’s Petra is among the new wonders [EPA]

The list of candidates was narrowed down to 21 by early last year.

Voting has taken place over the past six years, but only gathered pace in recent months.

The organisers said there was no foolproof way to prevent people from voting more than once for their favourite.

Original list

Unesco, the United Nations cultural agency, keeps updating its own list of world heritage sites, which now totals 851 places.

However, the organisation distanced itself from the seven wonders ballot, saying it reflected only the opinion of those who voted.

The original list of seven architectural marvels was collated by a variety of observers of the ancient Mediterranean and the Middle East.

The hanging gardens of Babylon, the statue of Zeus at Olympia, the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos lighthouse off Alexandria in Egypt have all been destroyed.