The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
The World Around Us: The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Seven, 6.30pm Saturday
Although only one of the seven wonders is still standing - the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt - if pressed, most people can remember names such as the Pharos of Alexandria or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. They've never left the public consciousness.
This documentary shows how these feats of architecture and mathematics have inspired designers and architects for thousands of years. The ancients had no computer simulations to assure them their designs would work, yet they were still willing to take enormous risks to create buildings that, to most people, must have seemed beyond the reach of human capability.
This is the first of two programs detailing how the makers constructed their masterpieces. It covers four of the seven wonders: the Great Pyramid, the ivory statue of Zeus at Olympia, the temple of Artemis in Ephesus and the tomb of King Mausolus (from whom we get the word mausoleum) at Halicarnassus.