Congrats to the Colosseum in Rome

If you’ve been following the news about the ‘New 7 Wonders of the World’, you’ll know that today was the BIG day, the day that the final ‘winners’ were announced at a star-studded gala in Portugal… you know, performances by Jennifer Lopez and Chaka Khan, hosted by Hilary Swank, Ben Kingsley and Bollywood star Bipasha Basu.

Nope, doesn’t ring a bell? OK, in a nutshell — the campaign to nominate the ‘new’ 7 wonders of the world was dreamed up by a Swiss businessman, Bernard Weber, to allow people around the world to vote, online, for a modernized set of ‘world wonders’, since only one of the original 7 Wonders still exists (the pyramids) . His goal: “So everybody can decide what the new seven wonders should be and not some government, not some individuals, not some institutions.”

So who won? We’ll get there in a moment. First we want to address one of the main critiques of this effort.

The Pyramids: The world’s eighth 7th wonder

A lot of people were concerned that the ‘new 7 wonders’ campaign was a mere marketing effort and meaningless publicity stunt. UNESCO went out of its way to disassociate itself from the voting. And some countries — notably Egypt — were miffed at the contest’s popularity-driven voting system. CNN quoted Egypt’s top antiquities expert saying that “Egypt’s pyramids are a ’symbol of the genius of the ancient people’ — and are above any sort of online poll.”

Fair enough. It’s obvious that the campaign was always going to annoy some people and countries, especially those (hello Egypt) whose ancient wonder didn’t make it onto the short list of new wonders. Sour grapes, anybody?

Happily, in a nice finesse move, the ‘New 7 Wonders’ people granted honorary status to the pyramids when it was becoming clear that the pyramids weren’t going to make it onto the list of ‘new’ wonders. Got all that?

So to make a long story short, here’s the just-announced list of winners in the ‘New 7 Wonders of the World’ contest, as voted on by 50+ million people around the world.

The New 7 Wonders of the World

1. The Great Wall of China
2. Petra, Jordan
3. The statue of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil
4. Peru’s Machu Picchu
5. Chichen Itza in Mexico
6. The Colosseum in Rome
7. India’s Taj Mahal

Apologies to some of the world’s other famous sites that didn’t make the final list, from Stonehenge in England to New York’s Statue of Liberty to Sydney’s Opera House. You may not have won, but we think you’re wonderful all the same.

–Scott McNeely

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 7th, 2007 at 8:12 pm and is filed under Departure Lounge, Destinations, News & Alerts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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