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Seven Wonders of the Ancient World with Bettany Hughes

Souvenirs, stadiums and soaking it up — Bettany Hughes’s ultimate guide to the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Ed Grenby - 15 July 2025

“The Seven Wonders of the World were like an ancient Rough Guide,” says Bettany Hughes. And she should know: the historian hasn’t only made Channel 5’s new series about them, she also spent seven years researching her book on the subject.

 

Early versions of the list appeared some 400 years BC, but “some are essentially a guy saying, for instance, ‘Don’t stop off at that port because you’ll get all your luggage nicked’, or ‘It’s worth going to Rhodes because you’ll get fantastic wine at the taverna there’.

 

In that spirit, here are Hughes’s tips for visiting the seven sites today…

 

The Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt

“Get there early, so you’re first in the queue when it opens at 8am – then 100% definitely allow all day, not just two hours. As well as the pyramids, you’ve got Cairo’s amazing new Grand Egyptian Museum, and four minutes away there’s a very nice coffee shop. Then stay till sunset, which is the most beautiful, exquisite, ethereal time to see the Pyramids. The night sky was so important for the ancient Egyptians, so what these giant ‘resurrection machines’ looked like at night mattered just as much as by day.

 

“The Great Pyramid is 4,600 years old, and it’s the only one of the Seven Wonders still standing. Give it the respect it deserves and don’t be bullied into making it just a short stop on a tour!”

 

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The Lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt

“The Lighthouse has gone, but you can find bits of it in the great fort that still stands there: there’s a column outside, and some threshold stones. Give yourself a bit of a detective hunt: any red granite you find in that fort was originally put there 2,300 years ago. But use your imagination too – the Seven Wonders were created out of the human imagination, and it’s incredible that you can walk around the bay and look out at where the Lighthouse was. You just think ‘Oh my God, this was the world’s first skyscraper, the biggest lighthouse that’s ever been built’.”

 

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, Türkiye

“Make sure you buy a souvenir! That’s what the ancients would have done – picked up a rubbish little replica of the Temple, like tourists go and buy an Eiffel Tower or a Big Ben today. In fact, there’s a really amazing story in the Bible about this, because when St Paul went to Ephesus and said ‘Stop worshipping this pagan goddess’, the silversmiths of the city rose up against him and said ‘Great is Mother Artemis!’ because they were so anxious about losing the trade in silver knick-knacks.”

 

 

The Colossus of Rhodes, Greece

“If people know one fact about the Colossus, it’s that it stood straddling the harbour and ships sailed between its legs. But in fact that’s the one place it almost definitely wasn’t, because if you look at the engineering, it would be physically impossible for a bronze sculpture to do that: it would have to be doing the splits. I reckon it actually stood at the sanctuary to Helios, above Rhodes OldTown; but it could also have been at the Palace of the Grand Master. We can’t be sure, though, and ‘Place the statue’ is a game everybody who comes to Rhodes can play.”

 

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The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Greece

“At Olympia, not only can you see the site of the ancient Olympic Games and run up and down the stadium; you can actually see the workshop where one of the Wonders of the World was created. The artist who made it was called Phidias, and he built this perfect replica, exactly the same size as the Temple itself, so he could see what the statue would look like in situ and how the play of the light would work. You can see that – plus leftover scraps of hippopotamus ivory and chips of gold that he used.”

 

 

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, Türkiye

“Mausolus and his wife Artemisia – who was also his sister – were a fun couple. They had this sacred party hangout where he would sniff lotuses, an ancient drug, and the fish were decorated with jewellery. But the Mausoleum, situated in what’s now the party town of Bodrum, was their tomb, and what’s very cool is that its footprint still exists absolutely perfectly, along with some bits of masonry. It’s right in the centre of town, but not many people go there, so you can just leave your bar or shopping trip and find this calm respite.”

 

 

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Iraq

“For obvious reasons, this is the one place we didn’t get to for this series. But we found a Babylonian cuneiform tablet, 2,600 years old, listing all the plants that were grown in the king’s gardens in Babylon, the same time the Hanging Gardens were built. Some of them are a bit exotic – tamarisk, ebony, a plant called Slave Girl’s Buttocks – but there’s also plenty of things you can pick up in a supermarket today: celery, sorrel, radish, lentils… So if you can’t get to Iraq, just pop down to Sainsbury’s and make yourself a salad!”

 

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