Americas

New 7 wonders to be announced Saturday

(AP)
Updated: 2007-07-05 23:46

GENEVA, Switzerland - The Great Wall of China, the Colosseum in Rome and Peru's Machu Picchu are leading contenders to be among the new seven wonders of the world, as a massive poll draws to a close with votes already cast by more than 90 million people, organizers say.

The winners will be announced on Saturday in Lisbon, Portugal.

An upsurge in voting from the United States, Canada and Europe in recent weeks helped those regions catch up with Latin America and Asia to make the ballot truly global, said Tia B. Viering, spokeswoman for the "New 7 Wonders of the World" campaign.

As the Friday midnight GMT voting deadline approaches, the rankings can still change. Also in the top 10 are Greece's Acropolis, Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid, the Eiffel Tower, Easter Island, Brazil's Statue of Christ Redeemer, the Taj Mahal and Jordan's Petra.

The Great Pyramids of Giza, the only surviving structures from the original seven wonders of the ancient world, are assured of keeping their status in addition to the new seven after indignant Egyptian officials said it was a disgrace they had to compete for a spot.

In the final round of 20 candidates for the world's top architectural marvels, people from every country in the world have voted by Internet or phone, says the nonprofit organization conducting the balloting.

"It's so exciting," said Tia B. Viering, spokeswoman for the "New 7 Wonders of the World" campaign. "There are not many things that could bring the world together like global culture ... this is really something that every single person in the world can be interested in."

"This is all about bringing people together, to appreciate each other ... to celebrate diversity," said Viering.

The Colosseum, the Great Wall, Machu Picchu, India's Taj Mahal and Jordan's Petra have been among the leaders since January, while the Acropolis and the Statue of Christ Redeemer made their way up from the middle of the field to the top level, according to latest tallies. The United States' Statue of Liberty and Australia's Sydney Opera House have been sitting in the bottom 10 since the start.

Also in the bottom group are Cambodia's Angkor, Spain's Alhambra, Turkey's Hagia Sophia, Japan's Kiyomizu Temple, Russia's Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral, Germany's Neuschwanstein Castle, Britain's Stonehenge and Mali's Timbuktu.

The ancient city of Petra in southwestern Jordan — popularized by "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" and famous for its water tunnels and stone structures carved in the rock — jumped from the middle of the pack to the top seven in January. That was largely thanks to campaigning by the Jordanian royal family and thousands of Jordanians voting by text message over their mobile phones, Viering said.

The campaign was begun in 1999 by Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber, with almost 200 nominations coming in from around the world. The list of candidates was narrowed down to 21 by the start of 2006. Since organizers started a tour to each site last September, the competition has been heating up.

There is no foolproof way to prevent people from voting more than once for their favorite wonder, but most of the votes are cast by Internet in a system that registers each participant's e-mail address to discourage people from voting twice, Viering said.

"We have a lot of kids (voting) and that trend is continuing ... but we have votes really from every part of the population," she added.

The original list of wonders were concentrated in the Mediterranean and 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 are all gone.

After the Egyptian protest, the organizers of the campaign set the pyramids above the competition.

"We absolutely had no problem with this," Viering told the AP. As of Saturday, there will be eight world wonders including the Pyramids of Giza, she added.

Choosing world wonders has been a fascination over the centuries. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, keeps updating its list of World Heritage Sites, which now totals 851 places. The agency, however, is not involved in the New 7 Wonders project.

Weber's Switzerland-based foundation aims to promote cultural diversity by supporting, preserving and restoring monuments. It relies on private donations and revenue from selling broadcasting rights.

The finalists in the contest are:

ACROPOLIS, GREECE

The Acropolis, a flat-topped hill standing above Athens, draws around a million visitors each year to walk among its 5th-century-BC marble temples and admire the statues of Greek gods and goddesses. The largest temple is the columned Parthenon, which was used as a church and then a mosque until it was heavily damaged in a 17th century war.

HAGIA SOPHIA, TURKEY

The soaring cathedral, also called the Church of Holy Wisdom, was built in 537 at Constantinople, today's Istanbul, under the direction of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. In 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, it became a mosque with minarets, but Turkish President Kemal Ataturk ordered it turned into a museum in 1935, allowing the Christian mosaics that had been covered by the Muslims to be revealed again.

KREMLIN AND ST. BASIL'S CATHEDRAL, RUSSIA

Onion domes with golden cupolas surrounded by red brick walls are at the heart of Moscow's Kremlin, a Medieval fortress converted into the center of Russian government, and the symbol of communist dictatorship at Soviet times. The red brick Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed on adjacent Red Square featuring nine towers of different color, was built by Czar Ivan the Terrible in the mid-16th century to celebrate the capture of the Mongol stronghold of Kazan.

COLOSSEUM, ITALY

The giant amphitheater in Rome was inaugurated in A.D. 80 by the Emperor Titus in a ceremony of games lasting 100 days. The 50,000-seat Colosseum, which has influenced the design of modern sports stadiums, was an arena where thousands of gladiators dueled to the death, and, as tradition would have it, Christians were fed to the lions.

NEUSCHWANSTEIN CASTLE, GERMANY

The inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland, Neuschwanstein is a creation of "Mad King" Ludwig II of Bavaria, who had it built in the 19th century to indulge his romantic fancies, long after the age of castles. Perched on a peak in the Bavarian Alps, the gray granite castle rises to towers, turrets and pinnacles and contains many paintings showing scenes from the operas of Richard Wagner, whose work Ludwig admired.

EIFFEL TOWER, FRANCE

The 985-foot tower, built by the engineer Gustave Eiffel for Paris' International Exposition of 1889, has become the city's symbol. Made almost entirely of open-lattice wrought iron and erected in only two years with a small labor force, the tower — Paris' highest construction — demonstrated an important advance in building techniques and at first was considered by many to be an eyesore.

STONEHENGE, BRITAIN

How and why this circular monument of massive rocks was created between 3,000 B.C. and 1,600 B.C. is unknown, but some experts say its builders aligned the stones as part of their sun-worshipping culture, while others believe it was part of an astronomical calendar. Today it is a major tourist attraction and has spiritual significance for thousands of druids and New Age followers, some of whom gather on June 21 each year to celebrate summer solstice.

ALHAMBRA, SPAIN

The palace and citadel, perched above the city of Granada, was the residence of the Moorish caliphs who governed southern Spain in splendor until King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled them in 1492, ending 800 years of Muslim rule. Mosaics, arabesques and mocarabe, or honeycomb work, are stunning features of the decoration.

GREAT WALL OF CHINA

The 4,160-mile barricade running from east to west is the longest man-made structure in the world. The fortification, which largely dates from the 7th through the 4th century B.C., was built to protect the various dynasties from invasion by the Huns, Mongols, Turks and other nomadic tribes.

KIYOMIZU TEMPLE, JAPAN

Kyoto's Kiyomizu-dera, which means Clear Water Temple, was founded by the Hosso sect of Buddhism in 798 and rebuilt in 1633 after a fire. It features a three-stream waterfall which is believed to confer health, longevity and success to the drinker.

SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE, AUSTRALIA

Situated on Bennelong Point reaching into Sydney's harbor, the opera house with a roof looking like a ship in full sail was designed by Danish architect Jorn Utzon and opened in 1973 by Queen Elizabeth II. The building, whose roof is covered by over 1 million white tiles, features 1,000 rooms and hosts 3,000 events every year.

ANGKOR, CAMBODIA

The archaeological site in Siem Reap, 143 miles northwest of the capital Phnom Penh, was the capital of the Khmer (Cambodian) empire from the 9th to the 15th century, and served as administrative center and place of worship for a dynasty that ruled over a vast domain reaching from Vietnam to China and the Bay of Bengal, the most prosperous kingdom in South Asia's history. Featured are Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, two impressive temple ruins dating from the 12th century.

TAJ MAHAL, INDIA

The white marble-domed mausoleum in Agra, Uttar Pradesh state, was built by Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan between 1632 and 1654 for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died in childbirth. The complex — an outstanding example of Mughal architecture combining Indian, Persian, and Islamic styles — houses the graves of the emperor and his wife, as well as those of lesser Mogul royalty.

TIMBUKTU, MALI

Two of West Africa's oldest mosques, the Djingareyber, or Great Mosque, and the Sankore mosque built during the 14th and early 15th century can still be seen at the ancient city of Timbuktu in the northern Sahara Desert. Founded about A.D. 1,100, it was a flourishing caravan center in the Arabic world and a leading spiritual and intellectual center in the 15th and 16th centuries, with one of the first universities in the world established there.

PETRA, JORDAN

The ancient city of Petra in southwestern Jordan, built on a terrace around the Wadi Musa or Valley of Moses, was the capital of the Arab kingdom of the Nabateans, a center of their caravan trade, and also continued to flourish under Roman rule after the Nabateans were defeated in A.D. 106. The city is famous for its water tunnels and numerous stone structures carved in the rock, the most impressive of which is probably Ad-Dayr, 'the Monastery,' an uncompleted tomb facade that served as a church during Byzantine times.

STATUE OF CHRIST REDEEMER, BRAZIL

The 125-foot statue of Christ the Redeemer with outstretched arms overlooks Rio de Janeiro on Brazil's Atlantic coast from atop Mt. Corcovado (the "Hunchback"). Created by Polish-French sculptor Paul Landowski, the statue weighing more than 1,000 tons was built in pieces in France starting in 1926 and shipped to Brazil. The pieces were carried by cogwheel railway up the 2,343-foot mountain for assembly. The statue was inaugurated on Oct. 12, 1931.

EASTER ISLAND, CHILE

Hundreds of massive stone busts, or Moais, are all that remains from the prehistoric Rapanui culture that crafted them between 400 and 1,000 years ago to represent deceased ancestors. With some standing more than 70 feet tall and weighing 60 tons, the statues gaze blankly out on the south Pacific Ocean more than 1,000 miles off the Chilean mainland.

MACHU PICCHU, PERU

Built by the Incan Empire in the 15th century, the giant walls, palaces, temples and dwellings of the Machu Picchu sanctuary are perched in the clouds at 8,000 feet above sea level on an Andean mountaintop overlooking a lush valley 310 miles southeast of Lima. It remains a mystery how the huge stones were moved into place for the construction of the remote city.

PYRAMID AT CHICHEN ITZA, MEXICO

This step pyramid surmounted by a temple survives from a sacred site that was part of one of the greatest Mayan centers of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. Built according to the solar calendar, it is placed so that shadows cast at the fall and spring equinoxes are said to look like a snake crawling down the steps, similar to the carved serpent at the top. An older pyramid inside features a jade-studded, red jaguar throne.

STATUE OF LIBERTY, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The famous statue holding a torch has towered over New York Harbor since 1886 when it was dedicated as a gift of the French government, welcoming immigrants and Americans returning from abroad. An elevator inside takes visitors to the 10-story pedestal observatory, but access to the inside of the crown and torch is no longer permitted.