DORSEYLAND (NOT DISNEYLAND)

November 22, 2006, Google Earth

Mediaeval Wonders of the World

No, the Seven Mediaeval Wonders of the World were not at all mediocre, as one might expect of the Dark Ages, although the time span is 3,000 years. Those guys had something goin’ on, as we see here in Part 2 of the Google Earth Wonders of the World Tour. For the ancient marvels, go here.

W ~ O ~ W

The Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa were a necropolis consisting of a series of Alexandrian tombs of the Pharaonic funeral cult, with Hellenistic and early Imperial Roman influences.
A circular staircase leads down into tombs that were tunnelled into the bedrock during the age of the Antonine emperors in the second century AD. The facility was in use until the fourth century.

The Colosseum of Rome, originally known as the Flavian Amphitheatre, and today also referred to as the Coliseum, was capable of seating 50,000 spectators gathered to watch gladiatorial combat. Its construction began under the Emperor Vespasian in 72 AD and was completed by his son, Domitian, in the 80s.

It was built on the site of Nero’s enormous palace, the Domus Aurea, which had been built after the great fire of Rome in 64. Some historians opine that the construction of the Colosseum might have been financed by the looting of King Herod the Great’s Temple in Jerusalem, which occurred about 70 AD.

Dio Cassius said that 9,000 wild animals were killed in the 100 days of celebration that inaugurated the amphitheatre’s opening. The Colosseum’s name was derived from a colossus (a 130-foot statue) of Nero nearby. This statue was later remodeled by Nero’s successors into the likeness of Sol, the sun god, by adding the appropriate solar crown.

The Great Wall of China – the image shows its eastern end – also known in China as the Great Wall of 10,000 Li, is an ancient fortification built from the end of the 15th century until the beginning of the 16th, during the Ming Dynasty, in order to protect China from raids by the Mongols and Turkic tribes.

It was preceded by several walls built since the third century BC against the raids of nomadic tribes coming from modern-day Mongolia and Manchuria. The Wall stretches a formidable 6,700 kilometres from Shanhai Pass on the Bohai Gulf in the east to Jiayu Pass in western Gansu province, at the limit of the Gobi Desert and the oases of the Silk Road.

The Hagia Sophia, or Church of the Holy Wisdom, is a former Greek Orthodox church and mosque, now a museum, in Istanbul, formerly Constantinople. It is universally acknowledged as one of the great buildings of the world.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is the campanile, or bell tower, of Pisa’s cathedral. The tower was intended to stand vertically, but began leaning soon after construction began in August 1173.

Its height is 55 metres, its weight an estimated at 14,500 tonnes. The current inclination is about 10 per cent. The tower has 296 steps.

The Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, also known as Bao’ensi, or Temple of Gratitude, is in Nanjing, an ancient capital of China.

Warfare and subsequent destruction overtook the tower in the 19th century, and it is now under reconstruction.

Stonehenge is a Neolithic and Bronze Age monument near Amesbury in the English county of Wiltshire. It is composed of earthworks surrounding a circular setting of large standing stones, known as megaliths.

Most archaeologists think it was mainly constructed between 2500 and 2000 BC. The older circular earth bank and ditch have been dated to about 3100.

The name Stonehenge is derived from the Old English words Stanhen gist, meaning “hanging stones”, shared with a class of monuments known as henges: earthworks consisting of a circular banked enclosure with an internal ditch.