We live in a world that has grown complacent of the truly wondrous.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So much is possible at the click of a mouse that we sometimes forget
\nthe importance \u2013 and humility \u2013 of wonder, of admiration for any
\nachievement that, to use the phrase of a previous generation, beggars belief.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Wonders_man-made](\"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/Wonders_man-made-1-216x300.jpg\" "\\"Wonders_man-made")
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\u00a0<\/p>\n
This list of fifty man-made wonders of the world is unashamedly personal.\u00a0
\nI have been drawn to those wonders that seemed to me to be both the most
\naudacious and the most memorable, spectacles that do indeed provide wonder.\u00a0
\nMost are from previous centuries, reminders that whatever the achievement
\nof our own technologically advanced civilization, previous cultures were
\ncapable of extraordinary monuments.<\/p>\n
It can take a lifetime to make one\u2019s way to as many Wonders as one can,
\nand those visits can mark milestones:\u00a0 the Pyramids I first saw at night,
\nlit up for a Son et Lumiere performance;\u00a0 the Florence Duomo with a girl
\nI loved;\u00a0 the Bilbao Guggenheim with my family, the children impressed
\nwith Jeff Koons\u2019s giant Puppy Dog of flowers outside the building and Frank
\nGehry\u2019s luminous design, just as I had been with Neuschwanstein Castle when
\ntheir age.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Certain places have moved me exceptionally.\u00a0 The tragic history of the Solovetsky
\nIslands, with the use of the monastery as a central part of the Gulag Archipelago
\nby the Soviet penal system, must colour any view of it.\u00a0 Likewise it is difficult to
\nvisit the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem without being acutely conscious of both
\nthe differences and the similarities between the great religions that dispute that city.\u00a0
\nAnd to trace the cave paintings of Altamira or of other Paleolithic sites, created over
\n10,000 years before the Pyramids, is truly wondrous \u2013 the sense that even at the very
\nbeginnings of human consciousness we were already capable of such artistic imagination
\nand bold execution is both humbling and enlightening.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Published by Quercus<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Yes I know there are some I missed<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n Fifty overall Wonders allows room for manoeuvre, so in addition to those that might figure \u00a0<\/p>\n So what are the 50 Wonders I chose ?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0(with my\u00a0top ‘Seven Wonders’\u00a0in red)<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n MIDDLE\u00a0 EAST<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Hagia Sophia, Istanbul\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0[see sample layout as in book]<\/a><\/p>\n
\nin anybody\u2019s selection, I have also included less familiar icons such as the Minaret of Jam,
\nMonte Alban and the Clifton Suspension Bridge.\u00a0 It is axiomatic of such choices that they will
\nprovoke the reader to question both the inclusion and exclusion of some;\u00a0 indeed it is part of
\nthe pleasure of the list.\u00a0 Doubtless Philo received complaints, particularly from Athenians,
\nthat he had included Phidias\u2019s statue of Zeus at Olympia in his original list of 7 Wonders of the World,
\nbut not the same sculptor\u2019s statue of Athena at the Parthenon, or for that matter the Parthenon itself.<\/p>\n
![\"50](\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/images\/atmb_add_book-70x25.png\")
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