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amsterdam »
THE NETHERLANDS
Amsterdam’s labyrinthine canals
ripple out from the heart of the city,
brisk with sightseeing boats by day
and shimmering with lights by night.
Houseboats, churches, and narrow
houses with beautiful, oft-glimpsed
period interiors line the waterways,
which were built, like many of the city’s
loveliest buildings, with the riches gar-
nered during the 17th-century golden
age of the Dutch empire.
A wintery dusk settles over house-
boats on one of Amsterdam’s canals.
69
pyramids
of giza
EGYPT
What could be simpler in form yet
quite as beautiful as the Pyramids
of Giza, the oldest of the Seven
Wonders of the Ancient World? Built
some 4,500 years ago as tombs for
a triumvirate of pharaohs, the three
principal pyramids form part of a
larger necropolis on the Giza Plateau,
15 miles (23 km) southwest of Cairo.
A caravan of camels passes in front of
the Pyramids of Giza near Cairo.
71
petra
MA‘AN, JORDAN
Petra—from the Greek
petra,
or
stone—was the capital of the Nabate-
ans between 400
b
.
c
.
and
a
.
d
.
106, a
“rose-red city half as old as time” in
the words of the 19th-century English
cleric John Burgon, colored as if by
the “blush of dawn” and grown from
the rock as if by magic: “eternal, silent,
beautiful, alone.”
The rock-cut temple sand tombs of
El-Deir, the most celebrated of Petra’s
ruins, emanate a rosy glow.
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