Karahundj or Zorats Qarer

Karahundj or Zorats Qarer (also known as “Armenian Stonehenge”) is 3, 500 years older than England’s Stonehenge and 3, 000 years older than the Egyptian pyramids. Having a unique structure in its kind, it has not fully studied yet.

Zorats Qarer is in the spotlight of the tourists conditioned by its high historic-cultural value and easy-to-reach geographical position. It is located near the Yerevan-Iran and Yerevan-Mountainous Kharabagh highway, in the Sisian’s part, 300-400 meters far from the highway and distinguished by the nearby fascinating nature as well.

The monument is a complex of hundreds of vertically fixed stones covering more than three hectares area. The all stones of the monument are of basalt and on some of them there are hauls. The main disputes in scientific circles about this structure are framed within two viewpoints. Read more

Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in northern China, built, rebuilt, and maintained between the 5th century BC and the 16th century to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire from Xiongnu attacks during various successive dynasties.

Since the 5th century BC, several walls have been built that were referred to as the Great Wall. One of the most famous is the wall built between 220–206 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. Little of that wall remains; it lay farther north than the current wall, which was built during the Ming Dynasty. Read more

Temple of Artemis

The Temple of Artemis (Greek: Ἀρτεμίσιον Artemision), also known less precisely as Temple of Diana, was a Greek temple dedicated to Artemis completed— in its most famous phase— around 550 BCE at Ephesus (in present-day Turkey). Only foundations and sculptural fragments of the temple remain, the monument being one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. There were previous temples on its site, where evidence of a sanctuary dates as early as the Bronze Age.

The new temple antedated the Ionic immigration by many years. Callimachus, in his Hymn to Artemis, attributed the origin of the temenos at Ephesus to the Amazons, whose worship he imagines already centered upon an image (bretas). In the seventh century the old temple was destroyed by a flood. Around 550 BCE, they started to build the “new” temple, known as one of the wonders of the ancient world. It was a 120-year project, initially designed and constructed by the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes, at the expense of Croesus of Lydia. Read more

The Great Pyramids of Giza

The Great Pyramid of Giza (also called the Khufu’s Pyramid, Pyramid of Khufu, and Pyramid of Cheops) is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza Necropolis bordering what is now Cairo, Egypt, and is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World that survives substantially intact. It is believed the pyramid was built as a tomb for Fourth dynasty Egyptian King Khufu (Cheops in Greek) and constructed over a 20 year period concluding around 2560 BC. The Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world for over 3,800 years. Read more

The statue of Zeus

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was made by the Greek sculptor of the Classical period, Phidias, circa 432 BCE on the site where it was erected in the temple of Zeus, Olympia, Greece.

The seated statue, some 12 meters (39 feet) tall, occupied the whole width of the aisle of the temple built to house it. “It seems that if Zeus were to stand up,” the geographer Strabo noted early in the first century BCE, “he would unroof the temple.” Zeus was a chryselephantine sculpture, made of ivory and gold-plated bronze. No copy, in marble or bronze, has survived, though there are recognizable but approximate versions on coins of nearby Elis and Roman coins and engraved gems.  A very detailed description of the sculpture and its throne was recorded by the traveller Pausanias, in the second century CE. The sculpture, was wreathed with shoots of olive and seated on a magnificent throne of cedarwood, inlaid with ivory, gold, ebony, and precious stones. In Zeus’ right hand there was a small statue of crowned Nike, goddess of victory, also chryselephantine, and in his left hand, a sceptre inlaid with gold, on which an eagle perched. Plutarch, in his Life of the Roman general Aemilius Paulus, records that the victor over Macedon, when he beheld the statue, “was moved to his soul, as if he had seen the god in person,” while the Greek orator Dio Chrysostom declared that a single glimpse of the statue would make a man forget all his earthly troubles. Read more