Top view ... the Manhattan skyline. Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP
Maybe you have already cast a voten for the new seven wonders of the world or maybe you have no intention of doing so, but it's the kind of list no one can quite resist making mentally.
My seven wonders are like anyone else's coloured by personal memory and experience and may seem utterly eccentric - or banal. Then again, few visitors to the British Museum find the remains of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus in its Greek galleries the most impressive thing there - yet it was one of the original seven wonders of the ancient world. I'm not knocking the Mausoleum - it's just not the obvious supreme expression of classical art to modern eyes. Perhaps the ancients were as easily impressed by scale and spectacle as we are ... anyway here's my list (in no particular order) - what's yours?
1. The skyline of Manhattan, New York City, USA
2. The Alhambra, Granada, Spain
3. The Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
4. Antoni Gaudí's Casa Batlló, Barcelona, Spain
5. Michelangelo's Laurentian Library, Florence, Italy
6. The Acropolis, Athens, Greece
7. The Great Cistern, Istanbul, Turkey
