Wonders of the World Masterpieces of Architecture from 4000 BC to the Present

by Alessandra Capodiferro (Contributor)

With stunning photography and fascinating text, Wonders of the World takes you on a journey across six continents to discover the marvels of architecture from antiquity to the present day.

Genres: Travel, History, Reference, Art, Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Isabel Rebelo da Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a beautiful book with great pictures and covers the five continents, with ancient and modern architecture. The book was written in 2004 and we are now in 2020, and since then many other great structures have been built. it is still a great book.

[Marcus McCollom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great pictures, thoughtful entries for each wonder! The book was full of wonderful sights, however the book is obviously dated and some information needs updated. Unfortunately a couple of these places no longer exist. A long but interesting read for sure

[A.V. Dalcourt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I originally picked up this book because of its beautiful photography of ancient and modern buildings. At the time I was also looking for inspired travel locations.

This book is generally divided by continents with most of the book being dedicated to Europe (like half of it) and Asia (1/3 of it) with all other locations treated with a sprinkling of lack luster interest.

The chapter on Central and South America was by far the most informative as it was evocative, while the other chapters seemed to focus on name dropping and passing footnotes to imply a historical context. The most annoying chapter was the African ancient architecture where the author focused on attempting to describe the location at every major junction. But without a visual context for the reader to ground themselves, it just left me frustrated and wishing I was reading something a bit more comprehensive.

Visually, the photographs are stunning. South America's section could have used more photos to anchor the reader with some sort of visual context, but hardly suffered from the same problems that Africa's chapter had. The photos for North America (the US being the only country represented in the chapter and should have been labelled accordingly) lacked interior visuals which made me suspect that these were paid for ad placements for some brand awareness campaign rather than inspired travel. At least one of the locations featured is impossible for the average traveller to enjoy and therefore should have been excluded - we'll never even get close enough to admire the building that is super exclusive for the super rich. Why even mention it.

Did it inspire me? Not really. It has all of the usual famous sites that most people have on their to-see list anyway, so it didn't really offer anything new to consider, which was my main goal in reading the damn thing. It wasn't really all the informative either as it lack significant historical context beyond name dropping.

However, the photos are amazing.

[Walt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some lovely illustrations.

[Megan Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting