Ancient Wonders
Petra, Machu Picchu, Angkor and the pyramids — the places built so long ago that nobody alive can fully explain how, and what it is like to stand in them now.
4 placesMachu Picchu
An Inca estate on a ridge between two peaks, abandoned within a century of being built and never found by the Spanish. Now ticketed by circuit, by hour, and capped.
Petra
A Nabataean trading capital carved into rose sandstone, entered through a kilometre-long crack in a cliff. Far larger than the one facade everyone photographs.
Angkor
The capital of the Khmer Empire, a thousand square kilometres of temples and hydraulic engineering in the jungle, of which Angkor Wat is one building.
The Pyramids of Giza
The only survivor of the seven wonders of the ancient world, on the edge of a city of twenty million, and about 4,500 years old.