98 Fun Facts About Landmark

The Statue of Liberty was a gift to the United States from the people of which country?

France gave the statue to mark the two nations' friendship: Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted it, Gustave Eiffel engineered the iron frame, and it was dedicated in New York Harbor on 28 October 1886.

What does the Statue of Liberty hold in her left hand?

A tablet inscribed JULY IV MDCCLXXVI, the date of the Declaration of Independence; a broken chain and shackle lie half-hidden at her feet.

The Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan as a tomb for whom?

His wife Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631 giving birth to their 14th child; Shah Jahan had the white-marble mausoleum built for her at Agra, with some 20,000 workers on the project.

Why were the Taj Mahal's four minarets built leaning slightly outward?

To topple away from the tomb: the four minarets, each more than 40 metres tall, tilt slightly outward so any collapse would miss the mausoleum.

Which Roman emperor began building the Colosseum in AD 72?

Vespasian began the amphitheatre around AD 72 on the site of Nero's Golden House lake; his son Titus opened it in AD 80, and the name Flavian Amphitheatre comes from their dynasty.

What was the hypogeum of the Colosseum?

The hypogeum was an underground maze of tunnels and cages beneath the arena floor, added under Domitian, where animals and gladiators waited before being hoisted up through trapdoors.

Machu Picchu is believed to have been an estate for which Inca emperor?

Pachacuti is most often named, though no Inca records confirm it; radiocarbon dates show people living there by about 1420, two decades before texts say his reign began.

Which American explorer brought Machu Picchu to international attention in 1911?

Hiram Bingham was led to the ruins by a local guide on 24 July 1911, but Peruvian explorer Agustín Lizárraga had already written his name there in charcoal in 1902.

Petra, the 'Rose City' carved into sandstone cliffs, is in which country?

Petra lies in southern Jordan; the Nabataeans made it their trading capital and survived the desert by collecting rainwater in cisterns they carefully concealed.

Petra's Treasury stood in for the Holy Grail's temple in which film franchise?

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade used the Treasury's facade as the entrance to the Grail temple, and the film helped make Petra a global tourist destination.

Christ the Redeemer stands on top of which mountain in Rio de Janeiro?

The statue crowns the 710-metre Corcovado mountain in the Tijuca Forest; the 30-metre Art Deco figure, finished in 1931, is reinforced concrete faced with soapstone.

Which natural hazard has repeatedly damaged the fingers and head of Rio's Christ the Redeemer?

Lightning strikes the statue often: a 2008 storm damaged its fingers, head and eyebrows, and in 2014 a bolt broke a finger off its right hand.

At Chichen Itza, what shape does the equinox shadow on El Castillo appear to form?

At the equinoxes the stepped corners of El Castillo cast a zigzag shadow that joins the carved stone head at the stairway's base, forming the body of a serpent, the feathered-serpent god Kukulcán.

Strictly speaking, 'Big Ben' is the name of what?

Big Ben is the Great Bell inside the tower; it cracked months after first ringing in 1859, so it was given an eighth of a turn and still chimes with that different tone.

Which architect quit the Sydney Opera House project in 1966 and never returned to Australia to see it finished?

Jørn Utzon resigned after the state's works minister refused to pay running costs; he declined an invitation to the 1973 opening and never saw the building complete.

Who officially opened the Sydney Opera House on 20 October 1973?

Queen Elizabeth II opened the Sydney Opera House on 20 October 1973; its roof shells are covered in more than a million Swedish-made tiles laid in a subtle chevron pattern.

What is the official name of the Golden Gate Bridge's colour?

Consulting architect Irving Morrow chose International Orange because it complemented the headlands and stood out against fog; the bridge opened to pedestrians on 27 May 1937.

Workers saved by the Golden Gate Bridge's safety net during construction formed which group?

The 19 men caught by the safety net Joseph Strauss had slung beneath the deck called themselves the Half Way to Hell Club; the net failed in February 1937 when a scaffold fell through it, killing ten.

Which four presidents are carved into Mount Rushmore?

Gutzon Borglum carved Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln, chosen for the nation's founding, expansion, development and preservation; the 60-foot heads were to continue to the waist before money ran out in 1941.

The Burj Khalifa was known by what name during its construction?

Built as Burj Dubai from 2004, the tower was renamed Burj Khalifa at its opening on 4 January 2010 in honour of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, the UAE president whose Abu Dhabi had bailed out Dubai's debts.

The world's largest religious complex, in Cambodia, was originally dedicated to which Hindu god?

Suryavarman II dedicated the temple to Vishnu in the early 12th century; from the late 13th century it was gradually turned into a Buddhist temple, as it remains.

Unlike most Khmer temples, Cambodia's great 12th-century temple faces which direction?

It faces west, unlike most Khmer temples, which led scholars such as George Coedès to suggest it was built as Suryavarman II's funerary temple.

Stonehenge's smaller 'bluestones' were hauled from the Preseli Hills in which country?

The Preseli Hills are in Pembrokeshire, Wales; the Altar Stone was long thought Welsh too, until a 2024 study traced it to north-east Scotland.

Stonehenge is aligned to the sunrise on which day of the year?

The monument's axis points toward the Heel Stone and the summer solstice sunrise, and in the opposite direction to the winter solstice sunset; building went on in phases from about 3000 BC to 1600 BC.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa began tilting in 1178 while builders were on which floor?

The tower began to sink in 1178 while work was on the second floor, its three-metre foundation set in soft clay and sand; construction paused for nearly a century, and engineers reduced the lean to under four degrees by 2001.

The famous leaning structure in Pisa is actually what kind of building?

It is the bell tower (campanile) of Pisa Cathedral, begun in 1173 as the third structure of the Piazza dei Miracoli; seven bells hang at the top, reached by nearly 300 steps.

Which pope consecrated the Sagrada Família and declared it a basilica in 2010?

Benedict XVI consecrated the church and proclaimed it a minor basilica on 7 November 2010, 128 years after the first stone was laid; Gaudí's plan calls for eighteen spires for the apostles, evangelists, Mary and Jesus.

Which composer did King Ludwig II of Bavaria intend Neuschwanstein Castle to honour?

Ludwig built it as a homage to Richard Wagner, whose operas Lohengrin and Tannhäuser inspired its murals and Singers' Hall; he died in June 1886 before it was finished, and it opened to paying visitors that August.

Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was completed in 537 under which Byzantine emperor?

Justinian I had the current church built in five years by Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus, dedicating it on 27 December 537; it became a mosque in 1453, a museum in 1935 and a mosque again in 2020.

Which of the Forbidden City's 24 emperors was the last to live there, until troops evicted him in 1924?

Puyi abdicated as a boy in 1912 but was allowed to keep living in the palace's inner court until a warlord's coup evicted him in 1924.

When it went up in 1923, the Hollywood Sign actually read what?

The sign read HOLLYWOODLAND to advertise a hillside housing development; the Chamber of Commerce dropped the last four letters in a 1949 repair, and the whole sign was rebuilt in steel in 1978.

What did the letters CN originally stand for in Toronto's CN Tower?

CN originally stood for Canadian National, the railway that built the tower in 1976; in 1995 ownership passed to Canada Lands Company, a federal Crown corporation.

Which London bridge started opening in 1952 with a double-decker bus on it, so the driver jumped the gap?

Tower Bridge's south bascule rose under Albert Gunter's number 78 bus; he accelerated, dropped six feet onto the far half and was given a £10 bonus.

Which US president stood at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate in 1987 and demanded, 'Tear down this wall'?

Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhail Gorbachev from the gate on 12 June 1987; on 9 November 1989 crowds gathered at the wall to celebrate its fall.

Which is true of the moai of Easter Island?

They are whole-body statues, not just heads: many at the Rano Raraku quarry are buried to their shoulders, and excavated 'heads' have revealed their bodies.

Uluru was previously known by what English name?

Surveyor William Gosse named it Ayers Rock in 1873 after Sir Henry Ayers, Chief Secretary of South Australia; the Anangu's sacred site was closed to climbers in October 2019.

Hoover Dam holds back which river?

The dam spans Black Canyon of the Colorado River on the Nevada-Arizona border, creating Lake Mead; built 1931-36, it was called Boulder Dam until Congress restored the name Hoover Dam in 1947.

Who led the failed 1880s attempt to build the Panama Canal?

Ferdinand de Lesseps, fresh from Suez, began digging a sea-level canal in 1881; malaria, yellow fever and landslides bankrupted his company in 1889, and the United States completed the 82-km canal in 1914.

The Parthenon was badly damaged in 1687 when Venetian artillery hit what inside it?

An Ottoman gunpowder store: a Venetian shell ignited it, and the blast blew out the temple's central walls and toppled columns.

Which UN agency distanced itself from the 2007 New 7 Wonders of the World poll?

UNESCO, which keeps the World Heritage List, said the privately run web-and-phone vote had no link to it and was no match for scientific heritage listing.

Which Southeast Asian temple was a 2007 New 7 Wonders finalist but missed the final seven?

Angkor Wat made the list of finalists but not the final seven; the temple is a symbol of Cambodia and appears on its national flag.

Which New York skyscraper ended the Eiffel Tower's 41-year reign as the world's tallest structure?

The Chrysler Building, topped by its secretly assembled spire in 1929 and finished in 1930, reached 319 metres to beat the Eiffel Tower's 312; a 1957 broadcasting aerial later lifted the Paris tower narrowly back above it.

What use saved the Eiffel Tower from its scheduled demolition in 1909?

Eiffel promoted the tower as an antenna: military radio telegraphy experiments under Gustave Ferrié from 1903 made it too useful to pull down when his 20-year concession expired in 1909.

Popular myth wrongly blames whose troops for shooting off the Great Sphinx's nose?

Napoleon's troops are wrongly blamed: Frederic Louis Norden's 1737 sketches already show the Sphinx noseless, and chisel marks show it was deliberately pried off, by one medieval account in 1378.

Which pharaoh led the first documented excavation of the sand-buried Sphinx around 1400 BC?

Thutmose IV cleared the sand as a prince after, his Dream Stele says, the Sphinx promised him the throne in a dream; the stele between its paws calls the statue Hor-em-akhet, 'Horus of the Horizon'.

The Alhambra in Granada was begun in 1238 by the founder of which dynasty?

Muhammad I ibn Nasr, founder of the Nasrid dynasty, began the palace-fortress in 1238; the Nasrids ruled Granada until Boabdil surrendered it to Ferdinand and Isabella in January 1492.

Buckingham Palace became the London residence of the monarch on whose accession in 1837?

Queen Victoria was the first monarch to live there, moving in three weeks after her accession in 1837; it began as a 1703 townhouse for the Duke of Buckingham, bought by George III in 1761.

Which Paris monument stands at the centre of the Place de l'Étoile, where twelve avenues meet?

The Arc de Triomphe stands where twelve avenues form a star, the Étoile, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I lies beneath its vault.

Visitors leave over a million euros a year, later given to charity, at which Rome landmark?

Trevi Fountain coins are tossed over the shoulder by visitors who hope the gesture will bring them back to Rome. The money goes to the Caritas charity, and fishing it out is illegal.

Legend says the Crown will fall if which birds ever leave the Tower of London?

Ravens are kept at the Tower to this day, at least six of them, and a Yeoman Warder known as the Ravenmaster tends them daily. Local legend traces the custom to King Charles II.

Neuschwanstein Castle inspired which fairy tale's castle at the original Disneyland in California?

Sleeping Beauty Castle opened with the park in July 1955, which makes it the oldest of all the Disney castles.

Farmers digging a well near Xi'an in 1974 stumbled upon which buried Chinese landmark?

Terracotta Army pits hold more than 8,000 life-sized clay soldiers, made to guard China's first emperor after his death. Most of them remain where they were buried.

Which scientist is said to have dropped two cannonballs from the Leaning Tower of Pisa?

Galileo Galilei was living in Pisa at the time, and the story has him showing that heavy and light objects fall at the same speed. It first appeared in a biography written by his secretary decades later.

Sydney Harbour Bridge, nicknamed 'the Coathanger', is held together by six million of what?

Rivets were heated red-hot before being driven into the steel, and the last one went through the deck in January 1932. The largest weighed 3.5 kg.

The Liberty Bell, named by anti-slavery campaigners in the 1830s, is displayed in which US city?

Philadelphia received the bell from a London foundry in 1752, and it cracked the first time it was rung there. Two local workmen, Pass and Stow, had to recast it twice.

The Great Sphinx of Giza pairs a human head with the body of which animal?

A lion gives the Sphinx its crouching body, carved as a single piece from the limestone bedrock of the Giza Plateau. The same plateau served as the quarry for the pyramids.

The Kaaba, the black-draped cube that Muslims face when they pray, stands in which city?

Mecca's Great Mosque, the holiest site in Islam, is built around the Kaaba, whose name means 'cube' in Arabic. Early Muslims prayed towards Jerusalem before the direction was changed.

The Parthenon was built in the 5th century BC as a temple to which Greek goddess?

Athena had the temple as her own, though it also served as the city treasury. In the 6th century AD it was converted into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

Howard Carter's team found whose nearly intact tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings in 1922?

Tutankhamun's tomb had been robbed twice soon after the burial, yet his mummy and most of the treasures were still in place. The discovery began with a single step at the top of the entrance staircase.

Which artist spent four years painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling for Pope Julius II?

Michelangelo disliked the scaffolding first built for him, which hung on ropes through holes in the vault, so he had another built in its place. He painted the frescoes between 1508 and 1512.

Which volcano buried the Roman town of Pompeii under metres of ash and pumice in AD 79?

Mount Vesuvius entombed people where they fell, and the hollows their bodies left in the ash let archaeologists cast figures of them in their final moments.

Which Copenhagen statue, based on a Hans Christian Andersen tale, has twice lost its head to vandals?

The Little Mermaid was beheaded in 1964 and again in 1998, and the bronze figure stands only 1.25 metres tall. A brewer's son commissioned her after seeing a ballet of the story.

Jumbo led 21 circus elephants across which New York landmark in 1884, easing doubts about its strength?

Brooklyn Bridge had been open for only a year, and the parade doubled as publicity for the showman P. T. Barnum's circus.

The Forbidden City, walled palace of the Ming and Qing emperors, sits at the centre of which city?

Beijing became the capital when the Yongle Emperor moved his court from Nanjing, and work on the palace began in 1406. A popular legend gives it 9,999 rooms, but surveys have counted fewer.

Chichen Itza, home to the stepped pyramid El Castillo, was built by which ancient civilization?

Maya builders made the city one of the largest in their world, in what is now Mexico's Yucatán state. The land under the ruins stayed in private hands until 2010.

The treaty that formally ended World War I was signed in the Hall of Mirrors at which palace?

Versailles was chosen on purpose: the German Empire had been proclaimed in the same hall in 1871, so it was dismantled in the very room where it was born.

Which Paris museum is entered through a glass pyramid designed by the architect I. M. Pei?

The Louvre gained its pyramid in 1989, built to bring daylight into a new underground visitors' hall. Pei's design has since become a symbol of the museum.

Which Paris landmark reopened in December 2024, five years after fire destroyed its spire and roof?

Notre-Dame burned in April 2019, when flames brought down a spire sheathed in lead and a roof framed in 13th-century oak.

Manneken Pis, a bronze boy with a wardrobe of around a thousand costumes, stands in which capital?

Brussels has shown a replica on the street corner since 1965, while the original is kept safe in the city museum. The figure is only 55.5 cm tall.

Easter Island, home to nearly 1,000 moai statues, is a special territory of which country?

Chile annexed the island in 1888, although the nearest point on its mainland lies more than 3,500 km away. The islanders were granted citizenship only in 1966.

The Petronas Towers, the world's tallest buildings from 1998 to 2004, rise over which Asian capital?

Kuala Lumpur built the twin towers on the site of its old race track. Taipei 101 took their height record in 2004.

Which London church has hosted coronations since William the Conqueror's in 1066?

Westminster Abbey is also a royal burial place. In 1685 scaffolding for James II's coronation left a hole in Edward the Confessor's coffin, and a choirman drew out a crucifix on a gold chain.

The Taj Mahal stands on the bank of the Yamuna river in which Indian city?

Agra's riverside plot belonged to Raja Jai Singh, who gave it to Shah Jahan in exchange for a large palace in the centre of the city.

Mount Rushmore, a state historian's idea for boosting tourism, is in the Black Hills of which state?

South Dakota's Doane Robinson pitched a giant monument in 1923 and became known as the 'Father of Mount Rushmore'. He had heroes of the Old West in mind, such as Lewis and Clark, but the sculptor chose presidents.

Which Roman emperor's reign saw a 73-mile defensive wall begun across northern England in AD 122?

Hadrian's frontier was manned by soldiers in large forts, smaller milecastles and turrets in between. It is the largest Roman archaeological feature in Britain.

Which Berlin Wall crossing point saw American and Soviet tanks face off in October 1961?

Checkpoint Charlie was simply 'C' in the NATO phonetic alphabet, after Alpha and Bravo on the motorway into the city. Ten tanks from each side stood 100 yards apart.

Which African country took its name from a ruined medieval stone city that lies within its borders?

Zimbabwe honours Great Zimbabwe, whose Great Enclosure has walls 11 metres high built without any mortar. It is the largest stone structure in precolonial Southern Africa.

The Potala Palace, winter home of the Dalai Lamas until 1959, towers over which city?

Lhasa sits about 3,700 metres above sea level, and the palace climbs 13 storeys up the hill at its centre. The palace later became a museum.

Which architect designed St Paul's Cathedral after the Great Fire of London gutted the medieval one?

Christopher Wren had put forward plans to remodel the old cathedral in May 1666, just months before the fire gutted it. His domed replacement was completed in 1710.

Which desert drawings in Peru, including a hummingbird and a monkey, are best seen from the air?

Nazca Lines include more than 70 animal and human figures, and the hummingbird alone is 93 metres long. An investigator later showed that a small team could copy the largest ones in days.

Fushimi Inari shrine, where thousands of torii gates form tunnels up a hill, is in which city?

Kyoto's shrine has roughly 10,000 gates, donated by businesses and individual worshippers. The custom of giving a gate to have a wish come true spread during the Edo period.

Borobudur, the largest Buddhist temple in the world, stands in which country?

Indonesia's great temple was abandoned for centuries after Java converted to Islam, until Thomas Stamford Raffles brought it to the world's attention in 1814.

Hoover Dam created which reservoir, the largest in the United States by water capacity?

Lake Mead swallowed the Nevada town of St Thomas, whose last resident left in 1938. Its ruins resurfaced decades later when the water level dropped.

China's Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest power station by capacity, spans which river?

The Yangtze dam was first envisioned by Sun Yat-sen in 1919, and Mao wrote a poem about the idea in 1956. As well as power, it gives flood protection to millions of people downstream.

Which ancient Roman building is topped by the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome?

The Pantheon is so well preserved largely because it never fell out of use: it has been a church since the 7th century. The height to the dome's open centre and the width of the round hall are both 43 metres.

Which temples of Ramesses II were moved to higher ground in 1968 to escape Lake Nasser?

Abu Simbel has two temples, the larger for the pharaoh himself and the smaller for his queen, Nefertari. Both were first carved out of a mountainside in the 13th century BC.

Which German landmark, begun in 1248, was finished only after 632 years of stop-start construction?

Cologne Cathedral was the tallest building in the world when it was finally finished, at 157 metres. Work on it had halted altogether around 1560.

Which Venice landmark, linking the Doge's Palace to its prison, did Lord Byron make famous in English verse?

Bridge of Sighs translates the Italian Ponte dei Sospiri: convicts were imagined sighing at their last view of the outside world as they crossed. Byron's Childe Harold opens a canto standing on it.

Mali's Great Mosque of Djenné, replastered by the whole town every year, is built from what?

Mud brick makes it the largest building of its kind in the world, and the annual rains wear it down. Palm sticks jutting from the walls double as scaffolding for the repairs.

Which architect clad the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in titanium, glass and limestone?

Frank Gehry nicknamed the museum's atrium 'The Flower' for its shape, and fellow architect Philip Johnson called the result 'the greatest building of our time'.

The Great Pyramid of Giza was the tomb of which pharaoh, also known as Cheops?

Khufu left behind the largest of the Giza pyramids, yet the only complete statue of him known is an ivory figurine about 7.5 cm high.

Which Ethiopian town, laid out as a symbolic Jerusalem, has eleven churches carved from solid rock?

Lalibela, once called Roha, carries the name of the king credited with the churches. They were cut out of the living rock rather than built up from blocks.

Which architect won the Gateway Arch design contest, beating a field that included his father?

Eero Saarinen's father, Eliel, was mistakenly sent the telegram telling finalists they had advanced. Once the mix-up was clear, he opened more champagne to toast his son.

Which Persian capital, founded by Darius the Great, burned after Alexander the Great captured it?

Persepolis fell to Alexander in 330 BC and its palaces burned soon after. In one account the fire began at a drunken feast, urged on by a courtesan named Thaïs.

India's Statue of Unity, the world's tallest statue when it was unveiled in 2018, depicts which independence leader?

Vallabhbhai Patel earned the tribute by uniting British India and more than 500 princely states into one country. The statue was inaugurated on what would have been his 143rd birthday.

Which sculptor designed the Statue of Liberty after his Suez Canal lighthouse plan was rejected?

Auguste Bartholdi had pitched a huge draped figure holding a torch as a lighthouse for the canal in 1869, but Egypt's ruler turned it down as too costly.

The gilded Shwedagon Pagoda, said to enshrine strands of the Buddha's hair, towers over which city?

Yangon protects the view by law: zoning rules cap new buildings at three-quarters of the pagoda's height above sea level.

Which Spanish city's Great Mosque had a Renaissance cathedral nave built into its centre?

Córdoba's mosque became a cathedral in 1236, when Castile captured the city, yet it stood with only minor changes for three centuries before the nave was inserted.