Listverse: 10 Greatest Alternative Pyramids From Around The World

I've had an article published on listverse: 10 Greatest Alternative Pyramids From Around The World. I think the title is pretty self-explanatory. It features upside-down pyramids from Slovakia, giant pyramids of death to hold the bodies of 40 million people, and pyramids built by real aliens.

It's a top ten list, but there were various other pyramids I considered, which I'll add to this entry in a couple of days (it's Saturday as I write and I've got a few things to do).

Preview: Amiens Cathedral

John the Baptist certainly gets around. His severed head especially. One of the most popular saintly relics around, his head can be found scattered across Europe and the Middle East. San Silvestro church in Rome has his entire skull on display, the Residenz Museum in Munich does likewise, San Lorenzo cathedral in Viterbo, Italy, has his chin, and more recently scientists confirmed that bones, including part of a skull, found in a church in Bulgaria "could be" of John the Baptist. It's not just Christianity who claims him - Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and Topkapi Palace in Istanbul also have at least parts of his skull. And let's not get into the other body parts - I could base an entire tour around them. As it is, the only place I'll being seeing (part of) John the Baptist's skull will be in here: Amiens Cathedral.

Despite looking disturbingly like a skull from the future wearing a golden spacesuit, this very holy relic is hugely significant to the vast Gothic cathedral that surrounds it. In fact, its arrival into Amiens in 1206 is regarded as the key inspiration for the cathedral's construction. In the Bible, John the Baptist bows out when King Herod beheads him as a present for his dancing granddaughter. Jesus's disciples bury his body, but we last we hear of his head is Herod's granddaughter proudly showing the head to her mother. It was a different family dynamic from mine, I must admit. Tradition has it that the head was buried in Herod's palace, and a few hundred years later (long after the palace was destroyed) some monks happened to discover it. So begins a series of great voyages for John the Baptist's head, being taken to various cities, lost, then refound again often in mystical circumstances. There's more than sufficient vagueness about its exact movements, but the skull we see now was discovered by a man called Walon de Sarton, at the end of the Fourth Crusade. Crusades were usually against the infidel Saracen in the Holy Land but this crusade had ended up being a little diverted and had instead sacked the fellow Christian city of Constantinople. Oops. Walon wasn't too bothered though: he was quite a fan of saintly relics, with a suspicious knack for acquiring them, and found himself in a monastery in Constaninople. While praying, he discovered a bunch of relics stuffed in a hole, waited till the monks were busy elsewhere, then quickly pocketed them and slipped away. Among the relics was John the Baptist's skull (as testified by an inscription on the box) and it was this that he handed to the bishop of Amiens when he eventually got home.

The skull has been in Amiens ever since. Back in the Middle Ages, it was a huge draw - the equivalent of Justin Bieber signing a lifetime deal at the O2 Arena. The pilgrims flocked, the church grew richer, and when it burnt down in 1218, rebuilding it in grand style was a no-brainer. The new Gothic craze was already sweeping the land, almost competitively so. Who could build the biggest and most beautiful? The Bishop of Amiens, a man called Evrard de Fouilly, believed he could. The knowhow was already out there - the Notre-Dames of Paris, Chartres, and Rheims were all well underway. A mason called Robert de Luzarches was employed to take a good look at these and try and do better. How did he do?

 

Well, it's the biggest of these for a start. Amiens Cathedral is the biggest cathedral in France. The central spire reaches 112.7 metres, and the total length of the cathedral is 145 metres, but it's the overall interior that is most notable, the volume being around 200,000 cubic metres. I'll forgive you if that number doesn't mean very much, but it's roughly twice as spacious as the Notre-Dame de Paris, or in double-decker bus units, it is almost 2000 double-decker buses. Yes, that's quite large.

The size then can be easily qualified, the aesthetics less so. Chartres these days is typically called the most "perfect" in terms of the Gothic style, and Notre-Dame is the most famous (by virtue of being in Paris). So what about Amiens? Well, it's certainly no ugly pig. For the layman, such as myself, I really don't think there's any substantial difference - Amiens Cathedral, like the others, is beautiful. At least until I visit it and get a deeper impression, it looks just as good as the very best out there. But others, with a keener, more expert eye, have voiced their approval. Our good friend, Viollet-le-Duc, who was involved in its restoration, called it the French Parthenon, praising its structural clarity. The writer William Whewell - the man who coined the term "scientist" - went further, stating, "The interior of the Cathedral is one of the most magnificent spectacles that architectural skill can ever have produced". But my favourite is undoubtedly from the art critic John Ruskin, who wrote: "...if you have no wonder in you for the choir and its encompassing circlet of light, when you look up into it from the cross-centre, you need not travel any further in search of cathedrals, for the waiting room of any station is a better place for you..."

With this style of cathedral, one of the chief selling points is always going to be the western facade. Cathedrals always have their main facades facing west so that the congregation faces east into the rising sun, symbolic of Jesus's ascension, and therefore the western facade always goes to town with making an impression: design, grandeur, symbolism, beauty. Amiens Cathedral therefore is typically grand and ornate. It has five levels: the exquisite trio of portals, a gallery of windows, a gallery of 22 statues of kings, the large rose window, and two slightly asymmetrical towers, 66 and 65 metres high. In my opinion, it looks pretty great, but it's not attracted universal praise, having been criticised on architectural grounds due to some of the parts not relating to each other proportionately. But I'll be honest - I don't know what that means. Sometimes I think that being an expert takes the fun away a bit.

Amiens Cathedral only took 49 years to build, a pretty remarkable achievement for a Gothic cathedral back in the 13th Century. Robert de Luzarches was succeeded by Thomas de Cormont, and then Thomas's son Renaud. It would be lovely to know a little about these people, but they are mere names. Despite their incredible achievements, architects were regarded as little more than fancy foremen and not celebrated for the geniuses they were. In fact, "architecture" as a concept didn't even exist - these men were just master masons. At least their names were recorded - we don't even know the name of the man or men who built Chartres Cathedral. Although the bulk of Amiens Cathedral was finished by 1270, it took a little longer for further additions to make it more what we recognise today. A series of chapels were added from 1290 to 1375, and more significantly the two towers were only added in the late 16th Century. Viollet-le-Duc also had a restorative hand in the mid-19th Century, replacing the western facade's gallery of statues.

These days we appreciate, even revere, the Gothic style, but it's fair to say that we've lost some of its medieval spiritual significance. The cathedrals really are a gift from the past we can never fully understand. There is a huge amount of art and symbolism inside - art in a cathedral was often used as a bible for the illiterate during the Middle Ages. With the centuries passed, the meanings are often obscured. Values change, and John the Baptist's head, once worshipped as a super-attraction, is now, for the likes of me, a kind of curiosity. But the impact of the cathedral remains undimmed: awesome, vast, with a sense of the heavens that even impresses the unbeliever. I won't pretend to understand the meaning of much of the finer details, in the same way that a person from the 30th Century wouldn't understand all the references made in a 20th Century episode of South Park. But I hope to appreciate it, just as our futuristic spaceman might laugh at Cartman singing.

As far as my Wonder quest goes, Amiens Cathedral is up against some pretty steep direct competition. It's hardly the only cathedral, and fellow Gothic cathedrals such as Cologne (bigger) and Chartres (more celebrated) look to offer a stern test of comparison. It's pretty difficult to tell from photos and descriptions - are all the best cathedrals just as good as each other, or do they have very obvious differences for even the layman? I look forward to finding out.

I'll be visiting Amiens Cathedral in the summer of 2014 most likely, and will give a fuller account of it and its history, as well as my own impressions, then.

Preview: Mont Saint-Michel

In the year 708, Aubert, the bishop of Avranches in north-west France, had a dream. In it appeared St Michael, not in a promotions drive for Marks & Spencers (that's an entirely different, St Michael) but with a message: Aubert was to build a sanctuary to him, on a small rocky island just off the coast. Aubert wasn't having any of it. He awoke, believing he'd been visited by the devil, and spent the day praying. The next night, St Michael returned, presumably trying to reassure Aubert that he really wasn't the devil and that he really wanted Aubert to build him an island sanctuary. But still Aubert wasn't convinced; he ignored the demands and prayed a whole lot more, maybe trying to stay awake a little longer that evening. It's fair to say St Michael wasn't impressed. The third night he visited Aubert again, and this time he meant business. Reiterating his demands for a sanctuary, he poked a hole in Aubert's head, and this time Aubert seems to have got the message. He built the sanctuary. The moral of the story? Just do what St Michael says, I guess. He seems to know best - Aubert might have a hole in his head, but the rest of us now have the medieval fantasy island known as Mont Saint-Michel.

Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France, is one of these visions that seem almost unreal. Not just from the pictures, but in my memory too. I visited before when about 15 years old during a family holiday, and it's fixed in my mind as something from a fantasy novel. A medieval church and fortified town piled high on top of a tiny island a short swim away from the mainland. Even better, until recently (more on which later), there was a causeway linking the island to the shore, that would appear - as if my magic - during low tide. The cobbled streets wind up to the island's peak, now crowned with an 11th Century church which replaced Aubert's 8th Century chapel, and an adjoining monastery was added in the 13th Century. Years later, when thinking back on the image, this pyramidal conglomeration of fortification and natural rock, I found myself wondering if I'd confused it with a film. But no, Mont Saint-Michel is really there - as over 2.5 million people a year can testify to.

Prior to St Michael's takeover, the rock was already held in high regards, being a place of Celtic worship back in the days of the Gauls and Romans, who called it "Monte Tombe". But it wasn't until Aubert - who became St Aubert for his troubles - that it began to assume a clearer role in history. Over the next few centuries, his small chapel began to attract the attention of pilgrims and pilgrims mean money. By 966, the chapel had been replaced with a larger church, and in 1022 the rulers of Normandy decided it was time for a proper statement of intent. A significantly larger church, in the then-fashionable Romanesque style (the precursor to Gothic) was built. This wasn't just built on the rock, it was built above it. A hugely ambitious design, it relegated the church before to just one of four crypts, which together made up the enormous foundations required to support the new Romanesque design. The summit of a hill is just a point - the four crypts clustered around the point, and the new church was built on what had once been air. Symbolically, the transept crossing (that's the point where the two lines in a cross-shaped church intersect) is at this summit point, and the church was built 80 metres long, and to be 80 metres above shore, representing a world created in perfection of balance and possibly (though this is my interpretation) a celestial sense of floating in the sky.

Arguably, this was the moment that Mont Saint-Michel became something special. Though it was much added to over the years, with the church partially rebuilt in the Gothic style and being swarmed and surrounded by other buildings as the commune formed, the audacious new church marked the moment that Mont Saint-Michel became more than just a building on an island. It became part of the island, combining as a single unified entity. It also started to fit into historical narratives. During the Hundred Year War, it was the only place in the West of France not occupied by the English, who just couldn't get past its defenses. And Mont Saint-Michael appears in the Bayeux Tapestry, when King Harold saves two Norman soldiers from the quicksand around it. King Harold was the last Anglo-Saxon king of England before the 1066 defeat by William the Conqueror changed the nation's history forever, and is possibly also depicted in the tapestry having the arrow through his eye. Mont Saint-Michel doesn't seem to be much of a lucky charm for the English.

Fame grew, the island developed, and pilgrimages to what must have been a near-mythical haven in the sea continued. These pilgrims included kings of France. Most curiously, it became a favourite spot for a series of great children's pilgrimages in the 14th and 15th Centuries, when stories abound of a great glow in the spire began in 1333. Children began visiting, usually from peasant families, from all around France and even beyond. These children were as young as 9 years old, and were unaccompanied, much to the unease of the Catholic Church. This mighty religious institution threatened to ex-communicate the children pilgrims, condemning the children for their inability to work and for accepting their poverty! More likely, the Church felt threatened by these popular events beyond their control, but at any rate their threats had little effect. What did have an effect was a far bigger threat - the Reformation, when the new Protestant denomination of the faith split the Church forever. Pilgrimages, of all kinds - petered out at Mont Saint-Michel (and other such sites).

These days, sharing the fate of many such places in history, Mont Saint-Michel has kind of become a joint museum-tourist attraction to itself. That's not so bad, as it ensures its survival, albeit one that likely indicates the end of its natural life as a monastic commune. That's not tourism's fault, that mostly happened after the pilgrims stopped coming. In fact, following the French Revolution in the late 18th Century, it was closed and converted to prisons, but by the 19th Century enjoyed a series of restorations as part of the French effort to save their historical buildings. It's now a declared historic monument and since 1979 has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of the earliest to be added to its list.

More recently, it's been rescued from nature. Mont Saint-Michel is, famously, an island, but one that in low tide allows a land crossing. However, in 1879, a causeway was built linking the island to the mainland. Over the decades, this acted as a physical barrier that disrupted the natural movement of the water, and since then silt has been building up in ever-increasing quantities, further exacerbated by a dam built in 1969 which reduced the power of a nearby river to push the silt into the ocean. The result of this has been to threaten Mont Saint-Michel's existence as an island - if nothing had been done, by 2040 the silt would have built up to such a degree that the bay would have been filled in completely. Mont Saint-Michel would have become landlocked, a mound on the mainland, and no longer a fantasy island.

Fortunately, since 1995 a project has been brewing, that has taken hold in the last few years. The causeway is now closed for road traffic, and is due to be destroyed in 2015. A new, less obstructive, bridge will be built in its place. The old dam has been replaced with one allowing better flushing out of the silt, and upstream changes are being made to increase the power of the river. It's not cheap, costing something like £200 million, but it is working. Mont Saint-Michel is returning to the sea.

I look forward to visiting Mont Saint-Michel again, this image of medieval fantasy - half-rock, half-fortified commune- that has lodged itself in the hazes of my memory. I may have to look beyond the tourism, especially as I might be visiting in the summer months of next year, as Mont Saint-Michel is a very popular spot with French tourists, but to be honest it can be no worse than Carcassonne on Bastille Day, which I visited last year. Like I said with Carcassonne, an old medieval town being thriving with people, shops and hubbub is no bad thing for the atmosphere - it's not as if these places were ghost towns in their heyday. Hopefully too, with a bit of planning, it might be possible to stay on the island itself. I'll find out.

Anyway, as usual, upon visiting, a fuller account of Mont Saint-Michel, its history and my own impressions will follow. I might even add a few details about my visit as a 15-year-old, and my (then 14-year-old) brother's fury at not being allowed to purchase a real, actual mace in a souvenir shop, a fury which to this day has not abated.

Preview: Ely Cathedral

Religion loves a good virgin. Take St Etheldreda. She lived in 7th Century England and was the daughter of a regional king called King Anna, who presumably was a big masculine chieftan with no forewarning of how his name would sound 1400 years on. Etheldreda was married young to a local prince called Tondbert, but only after having solemnly made a vow of perpetual virginity - not usually a very promising start to a marriage. History doesn't record whether Tondbert studied himself in the mirror, asking "Is it me?", but the poor fellow died just a couple of years later. Off the hook, Etheldreda no doubt sighed, but soon found herself set up in another marriage, this time with Ecgfrith, the King of Northumbria. He may or may not have heard the rumours beforehand, but he had to endure twelve years of Etheldreda shaking her head. His frustration reached the point where he even asked the Bishop of Northumbria to intervene, and persuade his wife to consumate their marriage - but no luck.

Eventually, Ecgfrith gave up, and let Etheldreda do what she'd been wanting for all these years - to be a nun. As part of the wedding gifts from her first husband, Etheldreda had received an island surrounded by marshlands filled with eels, called straightforwardly the Isle of Ely ("island of eels"). Centuries later, in 1086, these eels were notable enough to appear in the Domesday Survey, which included the charming little touch of mentioning the community's fishery, which produced 3750 eels. But this was ahead, and Etheldreda wasn't there for the eels, she was there for the island, which was a safe retreat away from the troubles of the world. There she set up a monastery, for both monks and nuns, and became the Abbess of Ely. She died of plague a few years after, but by then her legacy was assured. A contemporary history, the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum by the Venerable Bede describes her, with perhaps just a little relish, as “the virgin mother of very many virgins dedicated to God.” Her coffin was placed inside the church, and started producing miracles, such as healing, and the pilgrims flocked. Sainthood followed, and Ely became a well-regarded pilgrimage hotspot - and a good little earner for the church. Centuries later (about the same time the Domesday Book was earnestly counting its eels), England caught the cathedral-building bug from France. The Abbey of Ely was a prime candidate. Around the bones of Etheldreda, Ely Cathedral was built.

The huge Ely Cathedral sits today in the small town of Ely, population 15,000. The marshes were drained in the 17th Century and I'm sorry to say that the eels have all gone, but the mostly-12th Century cathedral remains intact. The centuries have seen it altered, at times significantly, but the medieval pilgrim with a lend of Doc Brown's DeLorean would still recognise it easily. He might even be impressed - during the 12th Century the area would mostly have been a building site, but these days the Cathedral is in just about the finest shape of its existence after millions of pounds of renovations during the 1980s and 90s. In a big city, even a large cathedral can get swallowed up by the speed and size of modern urban life, but Ely allows its cathedral to dominate.

What the medieval pilgrim wouldn't recognise, or wouldn't find anywhere whatsoever in fact, would be the body of St Etheldreda. Cathedrals were pretty much built around relics. These holy physical remains of saints were the raison d'etre for medieval churches and cathedrals, the star attraction that brought the pilgrims in. Although pilgrims to Ely Cathedral would have been duly impressed by the huge dimensions and especially the sheer length of the building - at 163 metres, the longest cathedral in Britain, and back in the 12th Century surely the longest building - they weren't there for the architecture. They were there for the relics, and Ely had several. Not just Etheldreda, but from the same era, her sister Sexburga (appropriately not a virgin - she had four children), Sexburga's daughter Ermenilda, and a third sister, Withburga. They had all been early Abbesses of Ely, all had miraculous bodies, and were now part of a super-collection of relics that brought about healing and other kinds of miracles for the desperate pilgrim. But in the 16th Century - the relics were destroyed.

Like any grand building that survives the ages, Ely Cathedral encapsulates snapshots of its nation's history. It began life in the late 11th Century following William the Conqueror's takeover of England after 1066. Already the Duke of Normandy, northern France, William brought with him a Norman style of architecture and set off a wave for large-scale ecclesiastical buildings in this style. Ely Cathedral was part of this wave. But we fast forward some centuries to the mid-16th Century, and another dominant king - Henry VIII. For various reasons, but largely to get an easy divorce of his first wife, he'd had enough of Catholicism, and thus of cathedrals. This was the Reformation in England, and Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries, a bad time for Catholics in general, and in 1539 Ely's monastery was dissolved. The prior and the monks of Ely had to surrender everything to royalty. Ely Cathedral got off lightly, and only suffered some of its riches being stripped and minor damage; by 1541 it was refounded and back up and running. But with one big loss - its relics had gone. The Bishop of Ely at the time had got a little carried away with the general theft and destruction of the times, and by his orders the shrines of Etheldreda and co were destroyed. The fate of the bodies are unknown - possibly torn to pieces by pilgrims eager to have a piece of saintly miracle in their homes - and no trace is now left. Thus, the Cathedral now lacks what it was built to contain, and originally made it famous.

To be honest though, I'm not a pilgrim, and believe more in aspirin than the power of God, so the lack of some becoffined bodies won't inhibit my appreciation of the cathedral. It's a great loss for Ely's spiritual history, but doesn't take the visual appeal of the cathedral away. Still in essence a grand Norman cathedral of the 12th Century, it has had a few significant alterations and changes, mostly for the best. An attractive porch in the Gothic style was added to the west tower (the big, prominent one) in the early 13th Century, and the interior was made more spacious around the same time. Significantly, the Cathedral used to have a tower in the middle, but it wasn't built very well, with the pillars filled with rubble. In the 14th Century it collapsed. This could have been disastrous, but Ely was fortunate to have the inspiration of a man called Alan of Walsingham. He innovatively reconstructed the space into one of Ely Cathedral's most celebrated features - the Octagon. A marvel of medieval engineering, supported by eight massive oak beams, this creates a spacious and light centre for the cathedral, by virtue of a lantern (a lantern is a rooftop architectural element, with windows allowing light to flood in).

Why then, why I have I chosen Ely Cathedral over many others? Isn't it just another cathedral? I have no good answer. It's an English cathedral, Norman-Romanesque style, so is distinct from the great Gothic ones of France and Europe. English cathedrals might not be as high as the French, but they tend to be longer. What impresses more - high or long? Arguably England has other more famous cathedrals: why not them? Well, quite simply, Ely caught my eye. Perhaps it can be seen as the English cathedral representative for my Wonder list, although that's not my design. As I've stated before, given the time and money, I'd love to add more cathedrals to my list: they are a fantastic type of building but there are simply so many that I have to be tough. I don't personally expect Ely to be in my top 7, but if I'm wrong and it blows me away, then I'll very happily add Winchester, Lincoln, Durham, Canterbury, and whatever other English cathedrals are out there to my list; but if Ely turns out to be as I expect - gorgeous, grand, atmospheric, and with a touch of the mystical, but in the end just another cathedral then I think I can be excused for not making my Wonder list dominated by the one type of building. I'm looking for a top 7, not a top 100.

Let none of this make it sounds as though I'm pre-judging Ely Cathedral. I am greatly looking forward to it, and really don't know what to expect. I'm now fairly used to the grand facades of the Gothic cathedral, so the elongated and slightly asymmetrical look of Ely Cathedral, placed in a small town, with or without eels, will be a pleasing diversion of the familiar, yet slightly different. Like going to see a football game played by monkeys. Or something like that.

I hope to be visiting Ely Cathedral some time this year, and will give a fuller account of it and its history, as well as my own impressions, then.

Google Maps: The View From Above

By the time I've finished visiting my 102 prospective World Wonders, I expect to have amassed approximately three years of actual travel time. In just the first year, I've taken planes, cars, buses, jeeps, bicycles, motorbikes, trains, subways, monorail, boats, tuk-tuks, kayak, hot air balloon, gyrocopter, and horse-and-cart; I've slept in innumerable hotels and hostels, of very varying quality; eaten food of unidentifiable origin and been forced - yes, forced - to thoroughly sample each nation's beer.

All this has been very enjoyable, but no doubt has involved some degree of time and effort. And it's not escaped my attention that's there's a much easier way to do it - Google Maps. By sitting on the sofa in my living room, moving the fingers on my right hand, I can pretty much visit the world. I've got eyes and Google has the images: who needs tuk-tuks, cheap hostels and mystery meat? (I'll continue to find myself forced to drink a variety of different beers.)

So I've taken a little time to find all my Wonders on Google Maps (Wikipedia's GPS coordinates have been very helpful) and see how they look. The purpose of this was mostly just curiosity, but I've found that it's been a pretty useful exercise in getting a rough idea of the scale of many of them. Some are in clearer resolution than others and some even have a nice 45° angle; in many cases (Europe and the US generally), a streetview is also possible. They are all there, albeit pretty blurry in a few cases, proving I suppose that they are indeed on Planet Earth.

Here they are, in a very rough order of size. Google Maps is oddly inconsistent with its zoom and scale, with it varying between locations. Even if it says 50 feet/20 metres, for example, the scale between these zooms can differ. Take a look down and you'll see what I mean. I've selected each Wonder at what I feel is their optimum zoom to show them off, and so I present them here in order of ascending size. I have to emphasise that this only very vaguely relates to the size of the Wonder, and even then, relates to their area rather than height, obviously. Still, it gives you an idea.

Actually embedding every Google Map image made things go a bit mental, so I've taken screenshots of them and pasted them here as pictures. Click on the picture to go to the Google Map, and click on the little orange man to see if there's a Streetview. Also, click on the name of the Wonder and go to my review or preview, for those that I've written.

At 50 foot/10 metre scale

Christ the Redeemer

                                                                                                                                                                  

At 50 foot/20 metre scale

Great Wall of China (at Mutianyu)

The Great Wall is very, very long, but not terribly wide, and so doesn't really do all that well on Google Maps. I could zoom out further but it becomes less identifiable as a wall; even at this zoom it takes a while to figure out what you're seeing. However, to get just the merest sense for how long the wall really is, I advise clicking on the picture and scrolling along the map for a while. It goes on and on.

This is a section at Mutianyu and near Jiankou, which I visited last year. It's fairly run-down, very scenic, and incredibly steep. There's obviously no Streetview, but click on the orange man anyway to see photos of the section, which do it far more justice than this pretty ordinary overhead view.
                                                                                                                                                                  

St Basil's Cathedral

My Wonder is the Kremlin, featured later on, but St Basil's is the most recognisable part of it (well, just outside of it, on Red Square).
                                                                                                                                                                  

Neuschwanstein Castle

                                                                                                                                                                  

Leaning Tower of Pisa

Italy seems to be blessed with a whole bunch of very pretty 45° angles on many of their landmarks. The tower leans to the south, so the lean can't really be seen on this image, but the image can be rotated on Google Maps.
                                                                                                                                                                  

Santa Maria della Salute

                                                                                                                                                                  

St Mark's Basilica

In 1902, the almost-100-metre-tall clock tower collapsed fairly suddenly. Remarkably, given what's around it, little damage was done to St Mark's. One cat died in the incident.
                                                                                                                                                                  

Gobekli Tepe

Not the clearest of images, unfortunately. This is very much a Wonder-in-progress, with the 11500-year-old archaeological site still with years or decades of excavation ahead. You can kind of see one of the stone rings just off the centre of the picture.
                                                                                                                                                                  

Statue of Liberty

The 11-point star-shaped pedestal that Liberty Enlightening The World stands on is very evident when seen from above, but despite the occasional but inevitable conspiracy theory, it is simply that shape (a hendecagram, if you're interested) because that was the shape of Fort Wood, the fortified structure built in 1811 that preceded the statue.
                                                                                                                                                                  

Empire State Building

A slightly disappointing one. I thought there might be a 45° angle, but instead it's a very top-down view of the Empire State Building. Most of the other skyscrapers on my list get better coverage.

                                                                                                                                                                  

Mount Rushmore

Another disappointing one. You can barely see the presidents' faces. This would be a perfect one for the 45° angle.
                                                                                                                                                                  

At 100 foot/20 metre scale

Sydney Opera House

This rewards clicking on and zooming out, to see the Sydney Opera House's great position in the harbour.                                                                                                                                                                  

Borobudur

It might be a bit blurry, but Borobudur's four-way symmetry - representing a mandala - looks great from above. There's lots of speculation about the Nazca Lines being mysterious because their makers could never have seen them from above, but this could equally apply to this symbolic layout of Borobudur, and other such temples, when viewed from the sky.

                                                                                                                                                                  

Temple of the Emerald Buddha

It looks a bit of a jumble if you're not familiar with the layout, but the chapel containing the Emerald Buddha itself is the large building at the bottom. It's pretty fuzzy, but if you look really closely - in the upper section of the temple (a little left of centre on the image) - you can see the scale model of Angkor Wat.

                                                                                                                                                                  

Angkor Wat

And here's the real thing. The patches of blue and green are scaffolding.
                                                                                                                                                                  

Shwedagon Pagoda

                                                                                                                                                                  

Bodhi Tataung Standing Buddha

It would take Usain Bolt over 9.58 seconds to run from head-to-toe of this giant Burmese Buddha, although as it would be a vertical drop I guess he'd plummet at the same rate as the rest of us. But click on the image and scroll to the left - there's a convenient giant reclining Buddha for Usain, or anybody else who fancies a run.
                                                                                                                                                                  

Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal is the most beautiful building in the world, but it turns out that it looks rubbish from above.
                                                                                                                                                                  

Lotus Temple

Whereas, in contrast, the Lotus Temple, which I found such a drab disappointment, looks spectacular.
                                                                                                                                                                  

Akshardham

                                                                                                                                                                  

The Golden Temple

Doesn't it look dinky?
                                                                                                                                                                  

Kailash Temple in Ellora

A shame it's not at a better resolution, but this shot really shows how the entire structure was just hacked out of the cliff.
                                                                                                                                                                  

Spring Temple Buddha

                                                                                                                                                                 

Leshan Giant Buddha

You've got to look really closely to find the Buddha here. Check out the two boats - large and small - just by the shore, and then look immediately to the right, by about 200 feet. You can just see the Buddha's head and body between the green of the trees and bushes.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Kiyomizu Temple

Or so Wikipedia's coordinates tell me. It looks a little like a quiet Japanese suburb.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Small but perfectly formed.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Himeji Castle

Unfortunately, entirely submerged under a mess of scaffolding until next year.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Cologne Cathedral

From above, just like any other cathedral - observe the cruciform layout. You need to stand in the square by the western facade and look up to fully appreciate what a huge beast of a building this is.
                                                                                                                                                                 

St  Paul's Cathedral

This highlights what I think is one of St Paul's biggest weaknesses - the lack of space around it. Cathedrals are beautiful buildings, and benefit from having a bit of space to stand back and appreciate them. St Paul's has that tiny area to the west; otherwise you've got to grab glimpses from between buildings.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Tower Bridge

The shadow on the water is the best part of this picture.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Stonehenge

Stonehenge would have benefitted from a closer zoom, but at least this highlights how near that stupid road is.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Ely Cathedral

                                                                                                                                                                 

Edinburgh Castle

I think the castle looks stunning from this angle.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Mont Saint-Michel

Mont Saint-Michel would probably look better a little more zoomed out, but in the Google Map image this has caught it low tide, which highlights quite how badly the area has become silted up, and how badly needed the "re-islanding" project is needed. This image, at the time of writing, is obviously over a year old, as just out of shot to the south the lines of cars and buses can still be seen parked at the entrance. This was stopped in April last year. Hopefully, in a few years, I can post a nice zoomed-out shot, with Mont Saint-Michel an island again.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Amiens Cathedral

                                                                                                                                                                 

Chartres Cathedral

                                                                                                                                                                 

The Eiffel Tower

The last thing a badly-positioned parachutist would ever see.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Notre-Dame

                                                                                                                                                                 

Sacre-Coeur

                                                                                                                                                                 

Thiepval Memorial

                                                                                                                                                                 

Dome of the Rock

This reminds me of a fuzzy image of a distant star.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Abu Simbel

It's there, honest. Though not at all clear, the main set of four statues are at the bottom left of the image. At the top, just right of centre, is the smaller temple fronted by six statues. Clearly, Ramesses II wasn't thinking of Google Maps when he planned these.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Palenque

The overall site is much bigger, as are all the Maya cities, but we have here the core of Palenque.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Nazca Lines - monkey glyph

In the centre of the image, with the tightly-coiled spiral tail.
                                                                                                                                                                   

Easter Island moai

Well, apparently. Could just be some hay bales.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Djenne Mosque

                                                                                                                                                                 

Church of St George

Very dinky, but also very apparent the entire thing has just been dug from the ground.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Ak Orda Presidential Palace

                                                                                                                                                                 

At 100 foot/50 metre scale

Chateau de Chambord

                                                                                                                                                                 

Chateau de Chenonceau

                                                                                                                                                                 

Avignon Papal Palace

                                                                                                                                                                 

Pont du Gard

Between the time it took for me to take the screenshot and this post to be put up, Google have obviously passed by the Pont du Gard and taken another picture. Click on the image - now it looks suspiciously like a Klingon bat'leth.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Sagrada Familia

In the grid-planned Eixample district of Barcelona, the Sagrada Familia fits very neatly into one city block.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Alhambra

                                                                                                                                                                 

Florence Cathedral

Within its surrounds, one of the prettiest Google Maps Wonders out there; all red terracotta and grey stone.
                                                                                                                                                                 

St Peter's

                                                                                                                                                                 

The Colosseum

                                                                                                                                                                 

Verona Arena

Smaller and less famous than the Colosseum - but still in use 2000 years on.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Parthenon

Is the Parthenon really this small? I guess I'll find out.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Hagia Sophia

                                                                                                                                                                 

Blue Mosque

                                                                                                                                                                 

CN Tower

                                                                                                                                                                 

Gateway Arch

                                                                                                                                                                 

Hoover Dam

Quite a dramatic shot, this: the sheer power of the dam using all its might to force back the water.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Registan

                                                                                                                                                                 

At 200 foot/50 metre scale

Marina Bay Sands

A disappointing Google Map image, pretty indistinct. The curving, three-towered, Skypark-topped hotel is in the centre of the shot, with the swimming pools visible on the right side.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Petronas Towers

From this angle, seemingly ready for take-off.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Dhammayangyi Temple in Bagan

Google hasn't really gone hi-res in Burma yet (oddly, you'll get far clearer shots in North Korea - the Ryugyong Hotel for example). Here we have Bagan's biggest temple, Dhammayangyi, as seen through the frosted glass of a bathroom door.

                                                                                                                                                                 

 Potala Palace

                                                                                                                                                                 

Terracotta Army

Well, under these huge warehouse roofs, at least.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Taipei 101

The park to the east (drably named "Millennium Park") acts as the face of a sundial, with the skyscraper as the gnomon. However, in this picture, obviously taken in the morning, the shadow is nowhere near the park. It turns out that the alleged "tallest sundial in the world" only works in the afternoon, which is handy for office workers waiting to finish work, but hardly qualifying it as a fully functioning sundial. It would be like having a watch that only told you when it was between 3 and 5pm daily.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Houses of Parliament

                                                                                                                                                                 

Versailles

                                                                                                                                                                 

Krak des Chevaliers

                                                                                                                                                                 

Palmyra

                                                                                                                                                                 

Baalbek

                                                                                                                                                                 

The Great Pyramid

Just look at the last few buildings - all huge in their own right - and then look at the Great Pyramid. Pretty big, eh? That's a lot of stone.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Karnak

Some say that Angkor Wat is the biggest religious building in the world, others say that it's Karnak. As Angkor Wat appeared ages earlier in this entry, the evidence would appear to be on Karnak's side.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Valley of the Kings

                                                                                                                                                                 

Disney World

I've not yet been to Disney World, and visiting would perhaps make it easier, but I found it quite a difficult one to identify on Google Maps. I think what we have here is the Cinderella Castle at centre-top and so I guess this part is focussing on the Magic Kingdom theme park.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan

Our ancient ancestors sure were good at building giant pyramids.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Chichen Itza

No offense, El Castillo, but you look pretty tiny compared to the previous two pyramids.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Tikal

                                                                                                                                                                 

Machu Picchu

A great place to visit on foot no doubt, but by the looks of it not one to get excited about for anyone looking on from a space station.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Burj Al Arab

The "H" is for "Hotel". Or something like that.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Burj Khalifa

This looks like a computer game screenshot of a futuristic moon-city..
                                                                                                                                                                 

At 200 foot/100 metre scale

Agra Fort

Click on the picture, then scroll right and just a little bit down to find the Taj Mahal.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Carcassonne

                                                                                                                                                                 

Petra

Another world famous Wonder not designed for the spaceman.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Cairo Citadel

A bit of a sprawl. The Mohammed Ali Mosque - Cairo Citadel's most recognisable feature - can be seen left of centre (the lumpy bulges with a square courtyard).
                                                                                                                                                                 

Leptis Magna

                                                                                                                                                                 

At 500 foot/100 metre scale.

The Kremlin

The Kremlin is the wonky D-shape dominating the left side of the picture. Red Square is to the Kremlin's top right, and St Basil's is that small lump directly to the right of the Kremlin.
                                                                                                                                                                 

At 500 foot/200 metre scale

Ayutthaya

Another difficult one to fully identify on Google Maps, especially as it is over a fairly large area. This, I think, is the Historic Park, and some ruins can be seen left of centre. However, confusing the whole issue is the amount of water - I think this image was taken during the devastating floods of a couple of years back, when Ayutthaya (and much of Thailand) was partially underwater.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Angkor Wat

So, Karnak is the biggest religious building? Perhaps not. Angkor Wat stakes its claim again.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Banaue Rice Terraces

The clouds don't help, but the terraces can kind of be seen, like visible contours on a map.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Thousand Buddha Caves

I hope this doesn't get my blog flagged as obscene.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Forbidden City

Turns out that the Forbidden City is pretty damn big.
                                                                                                                                                                 

City of Arts and Sciences

                                                                                                                                                                 

Pyramids of Giza

To get an idea of size, look at the very first image of the Christ the Redeemer statue. One side of the Great Pyramid, centre-top, is almost two times the width of that entire image.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Teotihuacan

                                                                                                                                                                 

At 1000 foot/200 metre scale

Meteora

The individual monasteries are almost indistinguishable, but they are on top of some of these lumpy rocks.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Golden Gate Bridge

                                                                                                                                                                 

At 1000 foot/500 metre scale

Bagan

Dhammayangyi, as seen earlier, is that squarish block near the middle.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Three Gorges Dam

                                                                                                                                                                 

At 2000 foot/500 metre scale

Forth Bridges

The third bridge, a mini-Millau lookalike, will be completed by 2015 and will be to the right of the existing ones.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Millau Viaduct

                                                                                                                                                                 

At 1 mile/2 kilometre scale

Nazca Lines

This shot covers the overall area of the lines, I believe, but might be a little too far out to get the details. Zooming in doesn't make things clearer, to be honest. Some of what you can see from here are roads and rivers.
                                                                                                                                                                 

Easter Island

                                                                                                                                                                 

At 200 miles/100 kilometre scale (about 1,000,000 foot/100,000 metre) scale

Great Wall of China

Ok, you'll be hard pushed to make out the details of the Wall here - this is pretty much the map of China. But from east to west, the wall is there. The biggest thing mankind has ever constructed, thousands of miles of wall across deserts and mountains. Combine everything you've seen so far, and it could be contained within one city, barely making a dot on this map. The Great Wall is a series of lines, all the way from the Bohai Sea to somewhere on the west. Simply immense.

However, after seeing this picture, it’s hardly credible that anyone could ever have believed the “seeing from space/moon” myth. Perhaps they should line the Wall with huge red neon spotlights to make it true.