Seven new world wonders to be announced in Lisbon
Contributor July 7th, 2007
Seven “new” wonders of the world, selected by public vote and upsetting cultural experts, are to be announced Saturday at a celebrity-studded televised ceremony in the Portuguese capital.
British actor Ben Kingsley and US actress Hillary Swank are to host the event at Lisbon’s Stadium of Light, starting at 1900 GMT, due to be broadcast in more than 170 countries.
A private Swiss foundation launched the contest in January, allowing Internet and telephone voters to choose between 21 sites short-listed from 77 selected by a jury.
It said it had gathered more than 90 million votes by the end of polling at midnight Friday.
Frontrunners out of the short-listed sites include the Acropolis in Greece, the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza in Mexico, the Coliseum in Rome, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Great Wall of China, the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu, Petra in Jordan, the statues on Easter Island, Britain’s Stonehenge and the Taj Mahal in India.
The privately-sponsored campaign was the brainchild of a Swiss filmmaker and museum curator Bernard Weber, following the destruction of Afghanistan’s giant Buddha statues at Bamiyan by the Taliban in 2001.
However, the UN cultural body that designates world heritage sites has declined to support the event.
“The list of the seven new wonders will be the result of a private initiative which cannot contribute in any significant or lasting way to the preservation of the elected sites,” the Paris-based UNESCO said in a statement last month.
The initiative seeks to recreate the popularity of the seven wonders of the world of antiquity.
Only one of the seven, the Pyramids of Egypt, still stands today. The others were: the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in Asia Minor, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Pharos of Alexandria.