LONDON: The ancient city of AlUla in northern Saudi Arabia has been included in a Conde Nast Traveler list of Seven Wonders of the World for 2023.
The list was compiled by award-winning travel writer Aaron Millar, who described AlUla as a place of “extraordinary history and cultural heritage.”
Millar wrote that when the site officially opened to visitors at the end of 2022, it “unveiled a 200,000-year-old piece of Arabian history.”
The UNESCO World Heritage site of Hegra is famous for its elaborate monumental tombs carved into stark red sandstone cliffs. It is estimated that less than 5 percent of the entire site has been excavated.
AlUla was joined on Millar’s list by Mont Saint-Michel in France, Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina, Tiger’s Nest Monastery in Bhutan, Cappadocia in Turkiye, the Lake District in the UK, and the sardine run in South Africa.
Of the original Seven Wonders of the World, only one, the Great Pyramids of Giza, still stands, with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Temple of Artemis, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus having long disappeared.
It was for this reason that Millar decided to list seven new wonders of the world each year, picking “the most awe-inspiring places on the planet for star-gazing, wildlife spotting and astonishing panoramas,” he wrote.
