17 Epic Historical Monuments of the World
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Time and again, monuments are often the most durable and famous symbols of civilizations that have been created and designed to impress or awe. Some of the most famous dating back thousands of years — the Egyptian Pyramids, the Greek Parthenon, and the Moai of Easter Island — have become symbols of their civilizations, while in more recent times, monumental structures such as the Statue of Liberty and Eiffel Tower have become iconic emblems of modern nation states. The word ‘monument’ comes from the Latin ‘monere,’ which means ‘to remind’ or ‘to warn.’
Moai set in the hillside at Rano Raraku, Easter Island. Photo Aurbina
Moai of Easter Island
The famous monolithic human figures of the Moai, carved from rock on the Polynesian island of Easter Island, Chile are chiefly the living faces — aringa ora — of deified ancestors that date between the years 1250 and 1500 carved by Polynesian colonizers of the island . Almost all moai have overly large heads three-fifths the size of their bodies — a sculptural trait that demonstrates the Polynesian belief in the sanctity of the chiefly head.
Moai of Easter Island. Photo Ian Sewell
The statues still gazed inland across their clan lands when Europeans first visited the island, but most were cast down during later conflicts between clans.
Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the island’s perimeter. Once they were erected on ahu, they may also have been regarded as the embodiment of powerful living or former chiefs and important lineage status symbols.
The 887 statues’ production and transportation is considered a remarkable creative and physical feat. The tallest moai erected — called Paro — was nearly 33 feet (10 meters) high and weighed 75 tons. The heaviest erected was a shorter but squatter moai at Ahu Tongariki, weighing 86 tons, and one unfinished sculpture, if completed, would have been about 69 feet (21 meters) tall with a weight of about 270 tons.
Moai are carved in relatively flat planes, the faces bearing proud but enigmatic expressions. The overly-large heads have heavy brows and elongated noses with a distinctive fishhook shaped curl of the nostrils, and the lips protrude in a thin pout with jaw lines that stand out against the truncated neck. Like the nose, the ears are also elongated and oblong in form.
The torsos are heavy, and sometimes the clavicles are subtly outlined in stone. The arms are carved in bas relief and rest against the body in various positions, hands and long slender fingers resting along the crests of the hips, meeting at the loincloth, with the thumbs sometimes pointing towards the navel. The anatomical details of the backs are not generally detailed, but sometimes bear a ring and girdle motif on the buttocks and lower back. Except for one kneeling moai, the statues do not have legs.
6 of the 15 moai at Ahu Tongariki, Easter Island. Photo Rivi
Though moai are whole-body statues, they’re typically referred to as ‘Easter Island heads.’ This is partly because of the disproportionate size of most moai heads and partly because, from the invention of photography until the 1950′s, the only moai standing on the island were the statues on the slopes of Rano Raraku — many of which are buried to their shoulders. Some of the ‘heads’ at Rano Raraku have been excavated to unearth their bodies, and seen to have markings that had been protected from erosion by their burial.
All but 53 of the 887 moai known to date were carved from tuff — compressed volcanic ash. There are also 13 moai carved from basalt, 22 from trachyte and 17 from fragile red scoria. After carving from the tuff, the builders would rub the statue with pumice from Rano Raraku, where 394 moai and incomplete moai are still visible today.
Sergio Rapu Haoa and a team of archaeologists discovered in 1979 that the hemispherical or deep elliptical eye sockets were designed to hold coral eyes with either black obsidian or red scoria pupils. The discovery was made by collecting and reassembling broken fragments of white coral that were found at the various sites.
Monuments have been created to commemorate a person or important events that were important to a social group as a part of their remembrance of past events. Some cities have even been planned and built around monuments such as Washington D.C., New Delhi and Brasilia.
Functional structures made notable by their age, size or historic significance can also be regarded as monuments. This can happen because of great age and size such as the Great Wall of China, or because an event of great import occurred there such as the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in France. Many countries use ancient monuments or similar terms for the official designation of protected structures or archeological sites which may originally have been ordinary domestic houses or other buildings.
They may even be designed to convey historical or political information, or used to reinforce the primacy of contemporary political power, such as the column of Trajan or the numerous statues of Lenin in the Soviet Union.
The social meanings of monuments are rarely fixed and certain and are frequently ‘contested’ by different social groups — while the former East German socialist state may have seen the Berlin Wall as a means of ‘protection’ from the ideological impurity of the west, dissidents and others would often argue that it was symbolic of the inherent repression and paranoia of that state.
Until recently, it was customary for archaeologists to study large monuments and pay less attention to the everyday lives of the societies that created them. New ideas about what constitutes the archaeological record have revealed that certain legislative and theoretical approaches to the subject are too focused on earlier definitions of monuments.
Parthenon
The Parthenon is a temple in the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, who the people of Athens considered their protector. As the most important surviving building of Classical Greece, its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art. The Parthenon is regarded as an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece and of Athenian democracy and one of the world’s greatest cultural monuments.
Recent shot of the Parthenon, Athens, Greece. Photo Kallistos
Its construction began in 447 BCE and was completed in 438 BCE, although decorations of the Parthenon continued until 432 BCE. The Parthenon itself replaced an older temple of Athena which historians call the Pre-Parthenon or Older Parthenon that was destroyed in the Persian invasion of 480 BCE.
Like most Greek temples, the Parthenon was used as a treasury. In the 5th century CE, the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. After the Ottoman Turk conquest, it was turned into a mosque in the early 1460′s, and it had a minaret built in it.
An Ottoman Turk ammunition dump inside the building was ignited by Venetian bombardment on September 26 1687 and the explosion severely damaged the Parthenon and its sculptures.
Parthenon sculpture Centaur and Lapith of a half-man, half-horse rearing over
a dead human. Photo Sean Hickin
In 1806, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin removed some of the surviving sculptures in 1806 — now known as the Elgin Marbles or the Parthenon Marbles — with the Ottoman Turks’ permission. They were sold in 1816 to the British Museum in London, where they’re now displayed, but the Greek government has been committed to the return of the sculptures to Greece without success to date.
Trajan’s Column
Trajan’s Column is a Roman triumphal column in Rome, Italy, which commemorates Roman emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars, located in Trajan’s Forum, built near the Quirinal Hill north of the Roman Forum. The freestanding column is most famous for its spiral bas relief that artistically describes the epic wars between the Romans and Dacians (101–102 and 105–106). Its design has inspired numerous victory columns, both ancient and modern.
Trajan’s Column
Completed in 113 CE, the structure is about 98 feet (30 meters) in height, and 125 feet (35 meters) including its large pedestal. The shaft is made from a series of 20 colossal Carrara marble drums, each weighing about 32 tons, with a diameter of 11 feet (3.7 meters). The 625-foot (190-meter) frieze winds around the shaft 23 times. Inside the shaft, a spiral staircase of 185 stairs provides access to a viewing platform at the top. The capital block of Trajan’s Column weighs 53.3 tons, which had to be lifted to a height of about 111 feet (34 m).
Ancient coins indicate preliminary plans to top the column with a statue of a bird — probably an eagle — but after construction a statue of Trajan was put in place, which disappeared in the Middle Ages. On December 4 1587, the top was crowned by Pope Sixtus V with a bronze figure of St. Peter, which remains to this day.
The continuous frieze winds up around the shaft from base to capital. The relief portrays Trajan’s two victorious military campaigns against the Dacians — the lower half illustrating the first (101-102), and the top half illustrating the second (105-106).
Trajan Column Frieze. Photo “Die Reliefs der Traianssäule”, Erster Tafelband: “Die Reliefs des Ersten Dakischen Krieges”, Tafeln 1-57, Verlag von Georg Reimer, Berlin 1896
The carvings are crowded with sailors, soldiers, statesmen and priests, showing about 2,500 figures in all and providing a valuable source of information for modern historians on Roman and barbaric arms and methods of warfare, such as forts, ships, and weapons, depicting details such as a ballista or catapult. The emperor Trajan, depicted realistically in the Veristic style, makes 59 appearances among his troops.
After Trajan’s death in 117, the Roman Senate voted to have Trajan’s ashes buried in the Column’s square base which is decorated with captured Dacian arms and armor. His ashes and those of his wife Plotina were set inside the base in golden urns, but the ashes no longer lie there.
Cristo-Rei
Cristo-Rei — Christ the King — is a Catholic monument of Jesus Christ overlooking the city of Lisbon, Portugal. As one of the tallest monuments in the world, it was inspired by the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and inaugurated on 17 May 1959.
The Cristo-Rei (Christ the King) in Almada, Portugal. Photo Magnusha
The national monument was built on the left bank of the Tagus river, facing Lisbon on the other bank, in the civil parish of Pragal, in the city of Almada, in the District of Setúbal, Lisbon Region.
The base of the monument, designed by architect Antonio Lino, is in the form of a gate, standing 246 feet (75 m) tall. At the top is a statue of Christ the Redeemer designed by sculptor Francisco Franco de Sousa, 92 feet (28 m) tall. At the base of the statue is an observation deck providing panoramic views of the city of Lisbon, the Tagus River and of the 25 de Abril Bridge.
Cristo-Rei view from front and cross. Photo Bott
The construction of Cristo-Rei was approved on a Portuguese Episcopate conference in Fatima on April 20 1940 as a plea to God to release Portugal from entering World War II, though the idea had originated on a visit by the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro in 1934, soon after the inauguration of the statue of Christ the Redeemer in 1931.
Construction started in 1950 and took 9 years to complete.
Stonehenge
One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of earthworks surrounding a circular setting of large standing stones, located at the centre of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred burial mounds.
The Sun rising over Stonehenge on the morning of the Summer Solstice June 21st 2005). Photo Solipsist
Archaeologists had believed that the iconic stone monument was erected around 2500 BC, however one recent theory has suggested that the first stones were not erected until 2400-2200 BC, while yet another suggests that bluestones may have been erected at the site as early as 3000 BC. The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch which constitute the earliest phase of the monument have been dated to about 3100 BC.
The site and its surroundings were added to the UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites in 1986 in a co-listing with Avebury Henge monument, and a national legally protected Scheduled Ancient Monument.
Fisheye image of Stonehenge showing the circular layout. Photo Edgy01
Archaeological evidence found by the Stonehenge Riverside Project in 2008 indicates that Stonehenge served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings. The dating of cremated remains found on the site indicate burials from as early as 3000 BC, when the initial ditch and bank were first dug. Burials continued at Stonehenge for at least another 500 years.
Stonehenge. Photo Frederic Vincent
Devils Tower
Devils Tower in Wyoming was the first declared United States National Monument, established on September 24 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt. The Monument’s boundary encloses an area of 1,347 acres (5.45 km2).
Devils Tower National Monument. Photo Snake311
The name Devil’s Tower originated in 1875 during an expedition led by Col. Richard Irving Dodge when his interpreter misinterpreted the name to mean Bad God’s Tower, which was later shortened to the Devil’s Tower, following a geographic naming standard whereby the apostrophe was eliminated.
The landscape surrounding Devils Tower is composed mostly of sedimentary rocks. The oldest rocks visible in Devils Tower National Monument were laid down in a shallow sea during the Triassic period, 225 to 195 million years ago. This dark red sandstone and maroon siltstone interbedded with shale can be seen along the Belle Fourche River. Oxidation of iron minerals causes the redness of the rocks. This rock layer is known as the Spearfish Formation.
Devil’s Tower Wyoming. Photo JS001
Above the Spearfish formation is a thin band of white gypsum called the Gypsum Springs Formation, which was deposited during the Jurassic period, 195 to 136 million years ago.
Created as sea levels and climates repeatedly changed, gray-green shales (deposited in low-oxygen environments such as marshes) were interbedded with fine-grained sandstones, limestones, and sometimes thin beds of red mudstone. This composition — called the Stockade Beaver member — is part of the Sundance Formation.
The Hulett Sandstone member, also part of the Sundance formation, is composed of yellow fine-grained sandstone. Resistant to weathering, it forms the nearly vertical cliffs which encircle the Tower itself.
Close-up of the columns. Photo Phil Konstantin
Devils Tower did not visibly protrude out of the landscape until the overlying sedimentary rocks eroded away. As the elements wore down the softer sandstones and shales, the more resistant igneous rock making up the tower survived the erosional forces. As a result, the gray columns of Devils Tower began to appear as an isolated mass above the landscape.
The exposed portions of the Tower still experience certain amounts of erosion, and as rain and snow continue to erode the sedimentary rocks surrounding the Tower’s base, more of Devils Tower will be exposed.
Cracks along the columns are subject to water and ice erosion due to the expansion of ice along cracks and fractures within rock formations which is common in colder climes. Portions and even entire columns of rock at Devils Tower are continually breaking off and falling. Piles of broken columns, boulders, small rocks, and stones — or scree — lie at the base of the tower, indicating that it was once wider than it is today.
Luxor Temple
Known in the as ‘the southern sanctuary,’ Luxor Temple is a large Ancient Egyptian temple complex located on the east bank of the River Nile in the city today known as Luxor — ancient Thebes — and was founded in 1400 B.C.E. The temple was dedicated to the Theban Triad of Amun, Mut, and Chons, built during the New Kingdom as the focus of the annual Opet Festival, in which a cult statue of Amun was paraded down the Nile from nearby Karnak Temple to stay there for a while with his consort Mut, in a celebration of fertility.
Pylon of the Temple of Luxor with the remaining Obelisk (of 2) in front. Photo Jerzy Strzelecki
The earliest parts of the temple still standing are the barque chapels, just behind the first pylon, which were built by Hatshepsut, and appropriated by Tuthmosis III. The main part of the temple — the colonnade and the sun court — were built by Amenhotep III, and a later addition by Rameses II, who built the entrance pylon, and the 2 obelisks (one of which was taken to Paris, France, and is now at the centre of the Place de la Concorde) linked the Hatshepsut buildings with the main temple.
Luxor Temple (Egypt) by night, showing central corridor and four colossi.
Photo Spitfire
To the rear of the temple are chapels built by Tuthmosis III, and Alexander. During the Roman era, the temple and its surroundings were a legionary fortress and the home of the Roman government in the area.
Statue at Temple Entrance. Photo Stahlkocher
Sources: Online MBA and Wikipedia
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From this list I have only seen the Parthenon, the Grand Canyon, the Coloosseum and the Statue of Liberty.
They are fantastic in each their own way. The Grand Canyon is beatiful and innocent. The Colosseum is dirty from its history. The Parthenon is amazing, but go to the London Museum to see the best parts of it. Sad but true.
The amazing thing about these historic monuments is that it was all done by hand… no modern tools and equipment were used. Totally fascinating as to how they were accomplished. I would totally love to travel back in time and watch how it was done.