Nominees for New Seven Wonders

More than 2,000 years after ancient Greeks identified the Seven Wonders of the World,
millions of people around the globe are voting online to update the list. The seven winners
from the list of 21 finalists will be announced July 7, or 07/07/07.

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The famous moai, giant stone statues on Chile's Easter Island, were centers of ceremony, focal points of power and memorials to the revered dead. The mysterious statues carved out of volcanic rock are in danger of being destroyed by years of tropical rains, wind and farm animals, among other things

The Statue of Liberty, sculpted by Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, was a gift from France to the United States, dedicated on Oct. 28, 1886. The statue, which stands on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, is seen as a symbol of freedom and democracy

The 98-foot-high Christ the Redeemer statue, at the summit of Corcovado mountain, is visible from much of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2005, members of the World Wildlife Foundation placed a giant faucet near the statue to commemorate World Environment Day.

The Inca ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru were one of the top seven vote-getters as of Jan. 31, according to a spokeswoman for the New7Wonders Foundation. Yale University professor Hiram Bingham found the ancient city in 1911.

Parts of Rome's Colosseum may have been built with booty Roman soldiers took from the destroyed Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D., according to Prof. Louis H. Feldman of Yeshiva University. The Colosseum is a freestanding structure, unlike earlier amphitheatres, and seats around 50,000 spectators.

Bridge engineer Gustave Eiffel designed the Eiffel Tower, erected in Paris in 1889. The tower, more than 1,000 feet tall with the flagpole, was the tallest man-made structure in the world until the construction of New York's Chrysler Building, completed in 1930.

The designer of the Sydney Opera House, Danish architect Joern Utzon, was named winner of the 2003 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the profession's most prestigious award.

The 4,500-year-old Giza Pyramids in Cairo is the only one of the original seven ancient wonders that still exists. The new campaign has generated controversy in Egypt, where Culture Minister Farouk Hosni called it "absurd."

The Angkor Wat temple basks in evening sunlight in northwest Cambodia. The vast 800-year-old temple complex, built in the 12th century by King Suryavarman II, is the jewel in the crown of the war-ravaged nation's tourism industry.

Visitors flock to the Badaling section of the Great Wall of China, north of Beijing. The wall crosses the Chinese countryside, extending for more than 4,000 miles. China has banned partying, stunts and other "inappropriate behavior" on the Great Wall to protect one of its top tourist attractions from erosion.

The Parthenon, a fifth century B.C., temple to the Greek goddess Athena, sits on the Acropolis in Athens. More than 2,000 years ago, the ancient Greeks identified the original

Chichen Itza, the archeological site near Valladolid, Mexico, was named by the Maya tribe that settled there and means "at the edge of the well of the Itza."

The minaret of the 15th-century Sankore Mosque, once the center of ancient Timbuktu, Mali's scholarly community, rises above the mud-brick walls of neighboring houses.

St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow's Red Square, built in the 16th century
by Ivan the Terrible, is noted for its multicolored towers.

The "fairy tale" castle Neuschwanstein in Schwangau, in Bavaria, Germany, appears through the early morning fog. The white castle built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria was the inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland.

The Alhambra of Granada, southern Spain, was the residence of the Moorish caliphs who governed southern Spain until 1492, when the city was conquered by the Christian forces of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, ending 800 years of Muslim rule.

How and why this circular monument of massive rocks was created between 3,000 and 1,600 B.C. is unknown, but homess discovered Jan. 30, 2007, beneath the grounds suggest a surprising level of social organization and ceremonial behavior to complement the massive stonework. The roughly 90 original slabs and larger wood and earthen circle about two miles away were designed to mark the summer and winter solstices.

The sun sets over Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, a church that was first built in 537 B.C. as a Mosque when the city fell to the Ottomans. When Turkish President Kemal Ataturk turned it into a museum in 1935, Christian mosaics covered up by the Muslims were revealed.

Muslims offer prayers in front of the white marble Taj Mahal in Agra, India. The mausoleum was built by a 17th century Mogul emperor for his favorite wife, who died in childbirth. The architecture combines Indian, Persian, and Islamic styles.

"Treasury of the Pharoah" tomb in Petra, Jordan, Nov. 23, 2002. This ancient city in southwestern Jordan was the capital of the Arab kingdom of the Nabateans, a center of caravan trade, that continued to flourish under Roman rule after the Nabateans' defeat in A.D. 106. The city is famous for water tunnels and stone structures carved in the rock.

Colored leaves surround the Kiyomizu Temple in Japan's ancient city Kyoto. The temple, whose namesake means "Clear Water Temple," was founded by a Buddhist sect in 798 and rebuilt in 1633 after a fire. Drinking from its three-stream waterfall is believed to deliver health, longevity and success.

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