Ever been to Machu Picchu? Angkor Wat? Walked the stairs of the Colosseum, climbed the Acropolis up to the Parthenon, emerged from the Nassau Street subway station and turned a corner to behold, for the first time, the Brooklyn Bridge?
I bet lots of you have done lots of these things. I've done the last three of the above five, and they all remain indelible moments. In nearly 20 years of living in New York, I grew quite bored by the sight of the Brooklyn Bridge, and probably frequently was pissed off at the inhospitable traffic situation on it. But boy, I will never forget the first time I laid eyes on it, during a visit before I lived there.
One has a physical response to these magnificent structures, no? Your chest empties out slightly; your skin tingles; you feel a kind of warmth around your eyes, as if your brain has just fired itself up to a new level of activity, and the blood is scampering up there to feed it the necessary fuel. It's the biology of awe, and it's quite a feeling.
Our subject today, then, is the great landmarks of humankind. This is kind of architecture, but it's also engineering, and it's also art in a way, right? And therefore if it's all three of those things, it's something more. These totems represent our greatest love and aspiration. Some are old, and the more remarkable for that. Some are new. All are breathtaking upon first sight.
It seems to me for reasons I can't quite articulate that this topic in particular could devolve into a trivia quiz rather than a knowledge quiz, which as you know is against our rules. So I've made these questions on the hard side, digging into details about the origins and features of these landmarks that will require you to think it through, make mental connections to other facts about history and so on. At least I think I have. You be the judge.
In any case I also thought that this subject should make for a really lively comment thread, as you tell the rest of us what you've visited, how it impressed you, what most moved you, etc. So here we go.
1. Scaffolding was placed around this landmark to protect it from airplanes' bombs at three points in history: during World War II, and during wars in 1965 and 1971.
a. Baalbek ruins, Lebanon
b. The Taj Mahal
c. Tomb of Khai Dinh, Vietnam
2. The name for this ancient landmark comes from the Greek verb for "strangle":
a. The Great Sphinx
b. The Parthenon
c. Topkapi Palace, Turkey
3. The Great Wall of China was built over many centuries. Which century witnessed what is generally considered the peak period of the building of the wall?
a. 15th century
b. 5th century
c. 2nd century BCE
4. To whom is Angkor Wat dedicated?
a. Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of beauty and light
b. The mother of the man who built it, Khmer ruler Suryavarman II
c. Vishnu, the preserver and protector of creation
5. The northern stairway of this 11th-century structure was designed to catch the interplay between the sun's light and the edges of the stepped terraces at sunset on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes:
a. The Great Pyramid of Giza
b. The Temple of the Sun at Machu Picchu
c. The Great Temple at Chichen Itza
6. Battle reenactments at this landmark included sea battles, during which it was filled with water and ships brought in:
a. The amphitheatre at Pompeii
b. The Colosseum
c. The Diocletian arena in Alexandria, Egypt
7. During the French Revolution, this landmark was designated to be destroyed, but the mason hired to oversee the destruction saved it by pointing out that razing it would create a pile of rubble that would take many years to remove.
a. Notre Dame de Paris
b. Versailles
c. Chartres Cathedral
8. The saint who gave his name to this landmark was, in life, an apprentice shoemaker who went on to pull what today would be regarded as p.r. stunts, all in behalf of his city's poor: he shoplifted for them, and went around naked and weighed down in chains, and berated his nation's ruler for his violent treatment of poor innocents; the ruler, chastened after this person's death, served as a pallbearer at his funeral.
a. St. Basil of Moscow
b. St. Vincente of Cadiz
c. St. Mark of Venice
9. Atop this European landmark is perched the Quadriga of Victory, a sculpture of a chariot drawn by four horses abreast; it was stolen by an invader and returned shortly after the invader's fall from grace.
a. The Forum in Rome
b. King Sigismund's Column, Warsaw
c. The Brandenburg Gate
10. Big Ben is not in fact the clock at Westminster Palace, but what, technically?
a. The spire above the clock
b. The largest of the five bells inside that strike the time
c. The nickname of Benjamin Skimpole, the original clockmaster
11. During the War of 1812, the British burned which landmark Washington, D.C. building basically to the ground?
a. The Supreme Court building
b. The White House
c. The US Capitol
12. The design work on the exterior of this landmark was one of the first to involve the use of computers in structural analysis:
a. The Gaudi Cathedral
b. Guggenheim Bilbao
c. The Sydney Opera House
Fun, eh? Answers below the fold.
Answers:
1-b; 2-a; 3-a; 4-c; 5-c; 6-b; 7-c; 8-a; 9-c; 10-b; 11-b; 12-c.
Notes:
1. Tough, maybe; good fake answers, but India and Pakistan had wars in 1965 and 1971.
2. Because the Sphinx was said to strangle those who could not answer her riddle.
3. Maybe you guessed that the materials to make it as strong as it is didn't exist in those earlier centuries.
4. A tough one, but Vishnu is the big guy.
5. Giza came way before the 11th century, and Machu Picchu somewhat after it.
6. Probably the easiest question of the day, I think. I totally made up c.
7. A story you might have heard.
8. The violent ruler was supposed to be the clue here (Ivan the Terrible).
9. I like this one. The invader was, sure enough, Bonaparte.
10. Big Ben is the bell that strikes the hour. Americans, did you get this?
11. The Supreme Court building didn't exist yet. They burned the Capitol, but not to the ground, and besides the Capitol dome didn't exist yet. So, the White House. You awful people you.
12. Logical deduction I'd think.
So tell us how you did, and tell us about the great landmarks you've seen and the ones you want to see and all the rest. Of the ones I've not visited, probably Machu Picchu is number one on my list, although of course one wants to see them all.
