New and old cross paths outside the Colosseum in Rome, Italy, which was recently voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.
Photo: Rob Kavanagh, Alamy

by Brook Wilkinson

The New Seven Wonders of the World contest that I blogged about a few weeks ago is over, and the winners were announced this past weekend (on 7/7/07, natch -- a date that Conde Nast Traveler's celeb guru Beata Loyfman deemed blogworthy for some very different reasons). Out of the more than 100 million votes cast, the top new wonders are:

The Great Wall of China
Petra, Jordan
Chichen Itza
The Statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro
The Colosseum in Rome
Machu Picchu
The Taj Mahal

Stars as wide-ranging as Jennifer Lopez and Neil Armstrong attended the ceremony to honor the New Wonders in Lisbon, but representatives from the U.N. -- which officially designates World Heritage sites -- were noticeably absent. Said UNESCO in a statement released last month, "The [new] list . . . cannot contribute in any significant or lasting way to the preservation of the elected sites."

Frankly, I don't think this new honor will noticeably increase attendance at any of these sites -- how large a rock would you have to be living under to not already have known that Rome's Colosseum is worth a stop? -- but I do appreciate UNESCO's sentiment. If we travelers aren't gentle with these treasures, the New Seven Wonders will disappear as quickly as the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only one of which (the Great Pyramid of Giza) is still standing. Here's our chance to be better caretakers than previous generations were.