Landmarks

Angkor Wat

The Khmer temple-mountain that is still the largest religious monument on Earth

Bodh Gaya

The place of the Buddha's enlightenment and its towering Mahabodhi Temple

Borobudur

The ninth-century Buddhist monument in central Java, a stone path to enlightenment

Chichén Itzá

The great Maya city of the Yucatán, crowned by the Temple of Kukulcán

Christ the Redeemer

Rio de Janeiro's Art Deco Christ, arms spread above the city from Corcovado

Fátima

The Portuguese hillside shrine built where three shepherd children reported Marian visions in 1917

Ise Grand Shrine

Shinto's holiest shrine, rebuilt from fresh cypress every 20 years

Karbala

The Iraqi shrine city of Imam Husayn and the vast Arbaeen pilgrimage

Lourdes

The Pyrenean grotto where a young girl's visions made a world center of prayer and healing

Lumbini

The garden in Nepal's lowlands where Buddhists honor the birthplace of the Buddha

Machu Picchu

The Inca royal estate on a mountain ridge high above the Urubamba River

Mecca

Islam's holiest city, home of the Kaaba and the destination of the Hajj

Medina

The City of the Prophet, burial place of Muhammad and Islam's second-holiest city

Mount Athos

The self-governing Orthodox monastic peninsula of northern Greece, closed to women for a thousand years

Mount Kailash

The unclimbed peak in western Tibet held sacred by four religions

Najaf

Iraq's shrine city of Imam Ali and the historic center of Shia learning

Petra

The rose-red Nabataean city carved into the sandstone cliffs of southern Jordan

Santiago de Compostela

The Galician cathedral city at the end of the Camino, where pilgrims honor Saint James

St. Peter's Basilica

The Renaissance basilica over the tomb of Saint Peter, principal church of the papacy

Stonehenge

The prehistoric stone circle on Salisbury Plain, aligned with the solstice sun

The Acropolis of Athens

The rock above Athens crowned by the Parthenon, emblem of classical Greece

The Alhambra

The Nasrid palace-city above Granada, last great monument of Muslim Spain

The Bahá'í World Centre

The shrines, terraced gardens, and governing seat of the Bahá'í Faith in Haifa and Acre

The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Mexico City's great Marian shrine and the most visited Catholic sanctuary in the Americas

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The Jerusalem church over the places Christians venerate as the crucifixion and tomb of Jesus

The Colosseum

Rome's Flavian Amphitheater, the largest arena of the ancient world

The Colossus of Rhodes

The bronze sun god that stood over a Greek harbor city for barely half a century

The Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib)

The gilded heart of Sikhism, open on four sides and feeding everyone who comes

The Great Pyramid of Giza

The oldest of the ancient wonders and the only one still standing

The Great Wall of China

Two thousand years of frontier walls snaking across northern China

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

The terraced gardens of ancient legend whose existence and location are still debated

The Lighthouse of Alexandria

The towering Pharos that guided ships into Alexandria for some 1,500 years

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

The tomb of a Carian ruler that gave the world the word mausoleum

The Moai of Rapa Nui

The giant stone ancestors of Easter Island, carved on one of the remotest inhabited islands

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia

Pheidias' gold-and-ivory colossus of the king of the gods, lost in the 5th century CE

The Taj Mahal

Shah Jahan's white marble tomb for Mumtaz Mahal on the banks of the Yamuna

The Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif)

The walled platform in Jerusalem's Old City, holy to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif

The Temple of Artemis

The great marble temple of Ephesus, now a single column in a marshy field

The Western Wall

The surviving retaining wall of the Temple Mount and Judaism's foremost place of prayer

Varanasi

Hinduism's holiest city, where life and death meet on the steps of the Ganges