Architectural Wonders

The buildings — and a few cities — that defined how humans live in space. From Göbekli Tepe's 11,500-year-old stone circles to the 828m Burj Khalifa.

A chronological documentary of 68 moments spanning c. 9500 BC–2024 on Loreline.

last updated 2026-07-16

1. c. 9500 BC — Göbekli Tepe. Stone circles in southeast Turkey — 7,000 years older than Stonehenge. Built by hunter-gatherers before agriculture, before pottery, before writing. Rewrote the chronology of monumental architecture.
2. 2560 BC — Great Pyramid of Giza. 147m tall — the tallest man-made structure on Earth for 3,800 years. 2.3 million limestone blocks. Khufu's tomb; the only surviving Ancient Wonder of the World.
3. c. 3000-1500 BC — Stonehenge. Wessex; the trilithons hauled from 250km away in Wales. Aligned with the solstices — function still debated. The most recognisable Neolithic ruin in the world.
4. c. 2500 BC — Mohenjo-daro. Indus Valley city in modern Pakistan. Gridded streets, sewers, public baths, granaries. Built and abandoned long before classical antiquity; Indus script still undeciphered.
5. c. 2055 BC-100 AD — Karnak Temple Complex. Pharaohs added to Karnak for 2,000 years. The Hypostyle Hall has 134 columns; the central twelve are 21m tall. The largest religious building ever constructed.
6. 447-432 BC — The Parthenon. Iktinos and Kallikrates; Phidias's sculptures. The entasis (the columns curve outward in the middle) and the floor curvature correct for optical distortion. The reference text for Western architecture for 2,500 years.
7. 220 BC-1644 AD — The Great Wall of China. Multiple walls built over 1,800 years. The total length, including all branches and rebuilt sections, is over 21,000km. The Ming-dynasty stone-and-brick sections most tourists see are 600 years old.
8. 0081 — The Colosseum. Held 50,000 spectators. Could be flooded for mock naval battles; had a retractable awning (the velarium) operated by 1,000 sailors. The template for every stadium since.
9. 0100 — Petra (Al-Khazneh). Nabataean rock-cut city in Jordan. Al-Khazneh — the Treasury — is carved directly into a sandstone cliff face, 40m tall. Was lost to the Western world until rediscovered by Burckhardt in 1812.
10. 0128-06-15 — The Pantheon. Hadrian's temple. Its 43.3m dome held the world record for unreinforced concrete dome until 1881. The oculus — 9m wide, open to the sky — is the only light source.
11. 0200 — Teotihuacan. Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, the Avenue of the Dead. Was the largest city in the Americas at its peak (125,000 people). The Aztecs found it already abandoned and gave it its name — "place where the gods were born."
12. 0537 — Hagia Sophia. Justinian's great dome. 31m wide, suspended on pendentives — an engineering breakthrough. Was the largest cathedral in the world for nearly 1,000 years. Cathedral, mosque, museum, mosque again (2020).
13. 0706 — Great Mosque of Damascus. Built by Caliph al-Walid on top of an old Christian basilica that had been a Roman temple of Jupiter. The model for the next 1,300 years of mosque architecture.
14. 0825 — Borobudur. 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist temple in Java — the largest Buddhist temple in the world. Nine stacked platforms with 504 Buddha statues. Abandoned for centuries; rediscovered in 1814.
15. 1150 — Angkor Wat. Suryavarman II's Khmer temple — originally Hindu, later Buddhist. The largest religious monument in the world by total area. Featured on Cambodia's flag.
16. 1163 — Notre-Dame de Paris. Gothic cathedral that took 182 years to build. Flying buttresses, three rose windows, the gargoyles. Nearly destroyed in the French Revolution; saved by Hugo's novel. The 2019 fire destroyed the spire; restoration completed Dec 2024.
17. 1220 — Chartres Cathedral. The most intact medieval Gothic cathedral. 176 stained-glass windows survived intact through both World Wars (removed and hidden). The "Chartres Blue" pigment still hasn't been fully reproduced.
18. 1239 — The Alhambra. The Nasrid palace in Granada — the last Muslim stronghold in Iberia. Muqarnas vaulting, the Court of the Lions. Surrendered to the Catholic Monarchs in 1492; the Hall of the Abencerrajes still has bloodstains in the marble.
19. 1320 — Salisbury Cathedral. The tallest church spire in the UK at 123m. Built on water-meadow ground without proper foundations; the spire has been leaning for 700 years. Holds one of the four surviving original copies of Magna Carta.
20. 1420 — The Forbidden City. Ming Emperor Yongle's palace complex in Beijing. 980 buildings, 9,999 rooms. Off-limits to commoners for 500 years. The world's largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures.
21. 1436 — Florence Cathedral (Duomo). Brunelleschi's dome — 42m wide, built without a wooden centring frame, an engineering puzzle that had defeated everyone for 100 years. Still the largest brick dome in the world.
22. 1450 — Machu Picchu. Inca royal estate, 2,430m above sea level. Built in dry-stone polygonal masonry that survives major earthquakes. Abandoned during the Spanish conquest and not seen by outsiders until 1911.
23. 1557 — Süleymaniye Mosque. Mimar Sinan's masterpiece for Suleiman the Magnificent. Sinan built more than 300 structures across the Ottoman Empire. Stands intact on the Istanbul skyline after multiple earthquakes.
24. 1626 — St. Peter's Basilica. Bramante, Michelangelo, Bernini all worked on it. Michelangelo's dome stands on Brunelleschi's shoulders. The largest church in the world by interior. Bernini's baroque colonnade frames the piazza.
25. 1653 — The Taj Mahal. Shah Jahan's mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal. 20,000 workers and 1,000 elephants over 21 years. The Mughal architectural high-water mark — Persian, Turkish, Indian, and Islamic traditions fused.
26. 1682 — Palace of Versailles. Louis XIV's seat of government and the most-copied palace in history. The Hall of Mirrors. Forced the entire French aristocracy to live there under royal surveillance. Bankrupted the state in the process.
27. 1710 — St. Paul's Cathedral. Wren's replacement for the medieval church destroyed in the Great Fire. The dome with the Whispering Gallery. Survived the Blitz when most of the surrounding City of London did not.
28. 1851 — The Crystal Palace. Joseph Paxton's glass-and-iron pavilion for the Great Exhibition. Built in nine months out of prefab parts. The first building in history to use modular industrial-scale glass and iron. Moved to Sydenham; burned down 1936.
29. 1882 — Sagrada Família. Gaudí took over the project in 1883; spent his last 43 years on it. He was hit by a tram in 1926 with construction perhaps 25% complete. Targeted completion: 2026, the centenary of his death.
30. 1885 — Home Insurance Building (Chicago). William Le Baron Jenney. 10 storeys, the first building supported by a steel frame rather than load-bearing walls. The world's first skyscraper. Demolished in 1931.
31. 1889-03-31 — The Eiffel Tower. Built as the entrance arch to the 1889 Paris World's Fair. 300m — the tallest structure in the world for 41 years. Parisians hated it on completion. Was planned for demolition in 1909; saved because it was useful for radio.
32. 1902 — Flatiron Building. Daniel Burnham's 22-storey wedge in Manhattan. One of the first steel-framed buildings in New York. Its acute corner is one of the most photographed in architecture.
33. 1912 — Casa Milà (La Pedrera). Gaudí. No straight lines, no load-bearing walls. The roof has Star Wars-stormtrooper-style chimneys that George Lucas literally copied. The model for organic architecture.
34. 1913 — Fagus Factory. Walter Gropius + Adolf Meyer. Curtain wall — glass walls hung from the building's structural frame — invented here. The starting point of modernist architecture.
35. 1919-04 — Bauhaus Dessau. Gropius's purpose-built school. Glass curtain walls, asymmetrical layout, sans-serif signage. The architecture school whose graduates would design half of 20th-century everything.
36. 1931-05-01 — Empire State Building. Built in 410 days. Held the world height record for 41 years. Mostly empty for its first decade (the "Empty State Building"). King Kong's perch.
37. 1931 — Villa Savoye. Le Corbusier's "machine for living in." Demonstrated his "Five Points" — pilotis, roof garden, open floor plan, ribbon windows, free façade. The reference example of high modernism.
38. 1936 — Fallingwater. Frank Lloyd Wright over Bear Run, Pennsylvania — cantilevered balconies over a waterfall. The house is engineered into the landscape, not on top of it. Almost collapsed before structural reinforcement in 2002.
39. 1939 — Rockefeller Center. A whole modernist downtown built in the Depression. Diego Rivera's mural Man at the Crossroads was destroyed because it included Lenin's face. Now home to 30 Rock and the Christmas tree.
40. 1952 — Lever House. Gordon Bunshaft (SOM). The first glass-curtain-wall skyscraper in Manhattan. Replaced the masonry-wall tradition; the International Style took over commercial architecture from this building forward.
41. 1952 — Unité d'Habitation, Marseille. Le Corbusier's vertical-city housing experiment — 337 apartments stacked in a single concrete slab on pilotis. The blueprint for the post-WWII social-housing tower; the source of both its triumphs and its disasters.
42. 1958 — Seagram Building. Mies van der Rohe + Philip Johnson. Bronze-framed glass tower, set back from Park Avenue with a plaza. The most-copied office building in history. Its plaza led to New York's 1961 zoning code rewards for setbacks.
43. 1959-10-21 — Guggenheim Museum (NY). Frank Lloyd Wright's spiral. Opened six months after his death. The visitor walks up the ramp; the artworks line the inside helix. Wright vs. the artists who hated the curved walls is still an ongoing debate.
44. 1960-04-04 — Pirelli Tower. Gio Ponti + Pier Luigi Nervi in Milan. 127m of tapered concrete and glass. The first European tower to claim modernity could be slender and sophisticated, not just American-style massive.
45. 1960 — Brasília. Lúcio Costa's pilot plan + Oscar Niemeyer's buildings. The new capital built from scratch in three years. Catedral Metropolitana, Palácio do Planalto, the National Congress. UNESCO World Heritage.
46. 1960 — Salk Institute. Louis Kahn for Jonas Salk in La Jolla. Two laboratory blocks facing the Pacific, with a single channel of water down the central plaza. Often called the most beautiful modernist building in America.
47. 1962 — TWA Flight Center. Eero Saarinen's swooping concrete terminal at JFK. The peak of mid-century "jet age" optimism. Closed in 2001; preserved and reborn in 2019 as the lobby of the TWA Hotel.
48. 1967 — Habitat 67. Moshe Safdie's Expo 67 housing experiment in Montreal — 354 stacked precast concrete cubes forming 158 apartments. A built thesis on modular high-density housing.
49. 1972 — Kimbell Art Museum. Louis Kahn in Fort Worth. Vaulted concrete ceilings with slit skylights; the light is "silvered." The reference example for how to light a museum from above without damaging the art.
50. 1973-05 — Sears Tower (Willis Tower). SOM in Chicago. 442m, the tallest building in the world for 25 years. The bundled-tube structural system invented here became the standard for supertall towers.
51. 1973 — World Trade Center Twin Towers. Minoru Yamasaki. 110 stories each — the world's tallest buildings for a year (until the Sears Tower). Loathed on opening, beloved by the 1990s. Destroyed Sept 11, 2001.
52. 1973-10-20 — Sydney Opera House. Jørn Utzon's sail-shaped roof — a construction problem he and Ove Arup spent eight years solving (the spheres trick). Utzon resigned in 1966 and never saw the finished building.
53. 1977-01-31 — Centre Pompidou. Piano + Rogers. The building inside-out — escalators, ducts, and structural elements colour-coded on the exterior. Shocked Paris in 1977; now beloved.
54. 1986 — Lloyd's of London. Richard Rogers's second great inside-out building. Stainless-steel modular pods with the lifts, plumbing, and stairs on the outside. The high-tech architecture movement's defining tower.
55. 1989 — Louvre Pyramid. I. M. Pei's glass pyramid over the museum's main entrance. Parisians initially hated it; now it's the iconic image of the Louvre. 673 glass panes (the Da Vinci Code arithmetic notwithstanding).
56. 1997-10-18 — Bilbao Guggenheim. Frank Gehry's titanium-clad museum that single-handedly turned Bilbao from rust-belt to global tourist destination. The "Bilbao effect" became the city-marketing rationale for every starchitect museum that followed.
57. 1999 — Jin Mao Tower. SOM's Pudong tower. 88 floors (a lucky Chinese number). The eight-fold symmetry references the pagoda; the diagonal cross-bracing is the structural innovation. Made Shanghai's Pudong skyline possible.
58. 1999-08-31 — Petronas Towers. César Pelli in Kuala Lumpur. Twin towers connected by a sky bridge at the 41st-42nd floor. Tallest buildings in the world until 2004. Made Malaysia's political point about Asian arrival.
59. 2004 — The Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe). Norman Foster's diagrid tower in the City of London. 41 floors of double-skin glass, naturally ventilated through atria. Made the City of London's skyline contemporary; opened the door for the Shard, Cheesegrater, and Walkie Talkie.
60. 2005-11-14 — Taipei 101. C.Y. Lee. 508m, the tallest building in the world from 2004 to 2010. Famous for its 660-ton tuned mass damper — the bronze ball you can visit on a tour. Survived a major typhoon in 2015 with the ball swinging a record 100cm.
61. 2008-03 — Beijing National Stadium (Bird's Nest). Herzog & de Meuron + Ai Weiwei. The interlocking steel beams. The opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics — the international debut of contemporary China.
62. 2010-01-04 — Burj Khalifa. Adrian Smith / SOM. 828m — the tallest building in the world by every common metric. Bankrupted Dubai mid-construction; the UAE renamed it from Burj Dubai to Burj Khalifa after Abu Dhabi bailed Dubai out.
63. 2012-05-16 — CCTV Headquarters. OMA / Rem Koolhaas. A loop of two leaning towers joined at the top and bottom — engineered to defy normal skyscraper logic. Nicknamed "Big Pants" in Chinese internet slang.
64. 2012-07-05 — The Shard. Renzo Piano. 310m, the tallest building in the EU when completed. Mixed-use: offices, hotel, apartments, viewing gallery. Funded largely by Qatari sovereign wealth — the new globalised model for European supertall.
65. 2014-11-03 — One World Trade Center. David Childs (SOM). 541m to the spire tip (1,776 feet — the year of US independence). Built on the WTC site; symbolic reconstruction. Sixth-tallest building in the world.
66. 2017 — Apple Park. Foster + Partners + Steve Jobs (who pitched it in 2011, before he died). The "spaceship" ring — 461m diameter, all curved glass. The single largest building Apple owns; cost ~$5 billion.
67. 2023 — Merdeka 118. KL's second supertall — 678m, the second-tallest building in the world after Burj Khalifa. Completed 2023, fully opened 2024. Faceted glass crystal form.
68. 2024 — Sagrada Família — Tower of Jesus Christ. The central tower's spire under construction in 2024 — when finished (2026 target), it will make Sagrada Família the tallest church building in the world at 172.5m. Still 142 years after Gaudí.

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