The Greatest Modern Engineering Wonders in the World

26 places in 13 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Hoover Dam

   United States · 9.4 km from Boulder City36.016° N 114.738° W

   

   Hoover Dam plugs the Black Canyon of the Colorado River on the border between Nevada and Arizona, a curved wall of concrete standing 726 feet (about 221 metres) from its foundation rock to the roadway on its crest. Built between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression, it created Lake Mead and was, at the time, a concrete structure of unprecedented size: some 3.25 million cubic yards went into the dam alone. It was handed to the federal government in March 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule.

   Did you know? The first recorded death on the project, surveyor J. G. Tierney, drowned on 20 December 1922; his son Patrick died there on 20 December 1935.

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2. 02 Millau Viaduct

   France44.080° N 3.022° E

   

   The Millau Viaduct carries the A75 motorway across the gorge of the Tarn west of Millau, in the Aveyron department of southern France, and it is one of the most beautiful bridges built in our time. The engineer Michel Virlogeux conceived it and Norman Foster's practice shaped its architecture: a single steel deck 2,460 metres long and 32 metres wide, hung from cables fanned out from seven masts, each 87 metres high, set on slender concrete piers. Its structural height of 343 metres made it the tallest bridge in the world for two decades.

   Did you know? Pier P2 rises 245 metres to the level of the road, making it the tallest bridge pier in the world when it was finished in 2003.

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3. 03 Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array

   United States34.079° N 107.618° W

   

   Twenty-seven white dish antennas, each 25 metres across, stand in a vast Y shape on the Plains of San Agustin, a high, flat basin in western New Mexico. Together they form the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), one of the most productive radio observatories ever built. Every dish rides on rail tracks, and the array is periodically rearranged: in its most compact configuration the antennas cluster within about a kilometre, while in the widest the arms stretch some 21 km each, giving images as sharp as those of a single dish tens of kilometres wide.

   Did you know? Each dish weighs about 209 tonnes, yet the whole array is regularly reshuffled by a lifting locomotive, nicknamed Hein's Trein, that carries antennas along the rail arms.

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4. 04 Griffith Observatory

   United States · 9.9 km from Los Angeles34.119° N 118.300° W

   

   Griffith Observatory sits on the south-facing slope of Mount Hollywood, its domes and terraces looking out over the endless grid of Los Angeles. From its terraces the view sweeps from Downtown to the south-east across Hollywood to the Pacific, and the Hollywood Sign is close enough to feel like a neighbour. It was the gift of Griffith J. Griffith, who donated the surrounding parkland to the city in 1896 and left money in his will for an observatory with the explicit aim of bringing astronomy to ordinary people rather than keeping it on remote mountaintops for scientists. Admission has been free since it opened on 14 May 1935, as he wished.

   Did you know? The observatory's Tesla coil, built in 1910 by Earle Ovington, once threw sparks more than ten feet across Madison Square Garden at an estimated 1.3 million volts.

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5. 05 Maunakea Observatories

   United States19.822° N 155.475° W

   

   Near the summit of Mauna Kea, at about 4,200 metres, a cluster of white and silver domes stands on red-brown cinder cones high above the cloud layer. This is one of the world's great observatory sites: twelve facilities housing thirteen telescopes, including the twin 10-metre mirrors of the W. M. Keck Observatory, Japan's 8.2-metre Subaru Telescope, Gemini North, the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope and the 15-metre James Clerk Maxwell Telescope for submillimetre astronomy, along with the linked dishes of the Submillimeter Array.

   Did you know? A Land Office map of 1901 already marked a Hawaii Astronomy Station on the mountain, decades before the first telescope arrived.

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6. 06 Yenidze

   Germany · 1.9 km from Dresden51.059° N 13.727° E

   

   On the western edge of Dresden's old centre, where the baroque skyline of domes and spires gives way to railway lines and the river, rises what looks at first glance like a mosque: a building of richly tiled walls, oriental windows and a great dome of coloured glass, with a slender minaret beside it. It is in fact a cigarette factory, the Yenidze, built between 1907 and 1909, and it remains one of the most unexpected industrial buildings in Europe.

   Did you know? The design is said to have been modelled on the tomb mosque of Emir Khair Bak in Cairo.

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7. 07 Golden Gate Bridge

   United States · 8 km from San Francisco37.820° N 122.479° W

   

   The bridge's color exists because nobody could agree on one. The steel arrived from the fabricators already coated in a burnt-orange sealant primer meant only to protect it from rust during shipping and assembly. The US Navy, worried about ships colliding with it in fog, wanted it painted black with yellow stripes; the Army Air Corps wanted red-and-white candy-cane bands for aircraft visibility. Consulting architect Irving Morrow looked at the primer against the fog and the water and argued to keep it, insisting the warm color read better in mist than gray or black ever would. The bridge authority agreed, gave the shade the official name International Orange, and it has been repainted in the same color ever since — not, as often assumed, continuously, but through a rolling touch-up program.

   Did you know? In 2020 new railing slats began making the bridge hum in strong winds; one analysis found the tones match the notes F, G, A and B.

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8. 08 Mir diamond mine

   Russia · 2 km from Mirny62.526° N 113.984° E

   

   On the edge of the town of Mirny in Yakutia, the ground drops away into a vast spiral funnel: the Mir pipe, one of the largest holes ever dug by people. The open pit is about 1,200 metres across and more than 525 metres deep, its walls terraced by the haul road that once wound down to the bottom, and from the viewing platform at its rim the trucks and machines that worked it would have looked like toys. The town of Mirny itself grew up beside the pit.

   Did you know? In the final years of open-pit work, dump trucks climbed a spiral road about 8 kilometres long from the bottom of the pit to its rim.

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9. 09 Magdeburg Canal Bridge

   Kanalbrücke Magdeburg

   Germany · 12.3 km from Magdeburg52.230° N 11.696° E

   

   The idea of joining the Mittellandkanal and the Elbe-Havel Canal directly over the Elbe River goes back to 1919, and by 1938 the anchor points and the Rothensee boat lift next to it were already built — then the Second World War stopped everything, and the divided, communist East German government afterward had no reason to finish a project designed to speed trade with the West. It sat half-built for roughly sixty years, a Cold War casualty nobody had the money or the incentive to complete.

   Did you know? At 918 metres, it is the longest canal bridge in Europe, with about 690 metres crossing the floodplain and 228 metres spanning the river itself.

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10. 10 Einstein Tower

    Einsteinturm

    Germany · 2.4 km from Potsdam52.379° N 13.064° E

    

    The Einstein Tower rises among the trees of the Telegrafenberg in Potsdam like something poured rather than built: a smooth, rounded shaft with deep-set windows, flowing down into a low body that seems to lean forward on its haunches. It was designed by Erich Mendelsohn, then at the start of his career, and it became the best-known work of his career and one of the landmarks of German Expressionist architecture. A young Richard Neutra worked in his office at the time.

    Did you know? Inside the shaft, the telescope optics sit on two stacked wooden platforms, each six metres high, with a lens of 14 metres focal length.

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11. 11 Bingham Canyon Mine

    United States · 33.7 km from Salt Lake City40.522° N 112.149° W

    

    The Bingham Canyon Mine, known to locals as the Kennecott copper mine, is the largest human-made excavation on Earth and the deepest open-pit mine in the world. Cut into the Oquirrh Mountains southwest of Salt Lake City, the pit is more than 1.2 km deep and about 4 km across, a vast terraced amphitheatre of stepped benches. It is visible to the naked eye from orbit, and it is thought to have produced more copper than any other mine in history. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1966.

    Did you know? The metals taken from Bingham Canyon are worth more than the output of the Comstock Lode, the Klondike and the California gold rush combined.

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12. 12 Parkes Observatory

    Australia · 17 km from Parkes32.998° S 148.263° E

    

    The Parkes radio telescope rises from the open farmland of central New South Wales, a 64-metre dish that tilts and turns to follow the sky. Its surface has a distinctive two-tone look, smooth solid aluminium in the centre and perforated panels towards the rim, and the focus cabin hangs on three struts 27 metres above the bowl. Completed in 1961, it was one of the first large steerable dishes in the world, and in 2020 it received the Wiradjuri name Murriyang, after the home in the stars of the creator spirit Biyaami.

    Did you know? Continuous upgrades have made the dish around 10,000 times more sensitive than it was when it was first switched on in 1961.

    More about Parkes Observatory →

13. 13 Pont de Normandie

    France · 14.7 km from Le Havre49.432° N 0.274° E

    

    Where the Seine finally widens into the English Channel, a pale ribbon of road climbs out of the marshes, hangs high over the shipping lane and comes down again on the far bank more than two kilometres later. The Pont de Normandie is the last crossing of the river before the sea, and when it opened in January 1995 its central span of 856 metres was the longest of any cable-stayed bridge in the world, beating the previous record, held by a bridge in Shanghai, by more than 250 metres. Seen from the estuary, its two concrete towers and the fans of cables that run down from them give the structure the weightless look of a drawing rather than a piece of motorway.

    Did you know? When it opened in 1995, the Pont de Normandie had the longest cable-stayed span in the world, at 856 metres.

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14. 14 Green Bank Telescope

    United States38.433° N 79.840° W

    

    The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, known simply as the GBT, is the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world. Its reflecting surface measures 100 by 110 metres, and it can point to almost any part of the sky above the horizon. It stands in a quiet valley in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, inside the National Radio Quiet Zone, a region of about 13,000 square miles created by the federal government in 1958 where radio transmissions are tightly restricted to protect the observatory's receivers.

    Did you know? At 148 metres tall the GBT rises about 60 per cent higher than the Statue of Liberty, pedestal included.

    More about Green Bank Telescope →

15. 15 Ngong Ping 360

    People's Republic of China · 29.5 km from Hong Kong22.256° N 113.902° E

    

    Ngong Ping 360 is a bicable gondola lift on Lantau Island in Hong Kong, 5.7 kilometres long, that climbs from the new town of Tung Chung to the Ngong Ping plateau, home of the Po Lin Monastery and the giant Tian Tan Buddha. Before it opened in September 2006 the only way up was a winding mountain road and a bus. The cable car turned a one-hour drive into a 25-minute ride that is now an attraction in its own right.

    Did you know? To follow feng shui tradition, only 1,688 tickets were sold for the first day of operation in September 2006, a number considered lucky.

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16. 16 Sphinx Observatory

    Sphinx-Observatorium

    Switzerland46.548° N 7.985° E

    

    The Sphinx Observatory sits on a rocky spur of the Jungfraujoch, the saddle between the Jungfrau and the Mönch, at 3,571 metres above sea level — one of the highest working observatories in the world and, from a distance, a strangely modest silhouette: a squat block with a silver dome perched on a crag of snow and rock, looking over the long white sweep of the Aletsch Glacier as it flows south into Valais. It opened in 1937, reached not by a path over the ridge but from inside the mountain, through a tunnel and a lift shaft cut up through the rock from the railway station below.

    Did you know? A research station on the Jungfraujoch was promised in 1894 by Adolf Guyer-Zeller as part of the concession to build the Jungfrau Railway.

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17. 17 Van Nelle Factory

    Kingdom of the Netherlands · 3.1 km from Rotterdam51.923° N 4.434° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    On the bank of the Schie on the north-western edge of Rotterdam stands the building that Le Corbusier called the most beautiful spectacle of the modern age. The Van Nelle factory was built between 1925 and 1931 for a company that roasted coffee and processed tea and tobacco, commissioned by its co-owner Cees van der Leeuw. It was designed by Leendert van der Vlugt of the office Brinkman & Van der Vlugt, working with the engineer J.G. Wiebenga, a specialist in reinforced concrete, and it is one of the defining works of the Dutch Nieuwe Bouwen movement. The draughtsman Mart Stam also worked on it and later claimed part of the authorship, a dispute that ended with his leaving the office.

    Did you know? A round, fully glazed tearoom known as the Bonbonnière crowns the roof; it was used to receive the company's honoured guests.

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18. 18 Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá

    Catedral de Sal

    Colombia5.019° N 74.009° W

    

    Some 200 metres inside a mountain of rock salt on the edge of Zipaquirá, miners and sculptors have carved an entire church out of the mountain itself. The Salt Cathedral is reached by a long descending tunnel lined with fourteen small chapels, one for each Station of the Cross, where crosses and kneeling steps have been cut directly from the grey-white halite. Soft coloured lighting picks out the texture of the walls, and the salt, streaked and faintly glittering, makes every surface feel both mineral and oddly soft.

    Did you know? Salt has been mined at Zipaquirá since around the 5th century BC, when the Muisca people exploited the deposits.

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19. 19 Montenvers Railway (Chamonix)

    Chemin de fer du Montenvers

    France · 39.9 km from Aosta45.923° N 6.875° E

    

    The little red rack train from Chamonix exists for a single view: the Mer de Glace, the "sea of ice" that pours down from the heart of the Mont Blanc massif. At roughly 7.5 km, and far longer when its feeding glaciers are counted, it is the largest glacier in France, and in the eighteenth century it was already the destination of travellers who rode mules up the slope to Montenvers to stare at a surface one visitor compared to storm waves frozen in an instant. The railway replaced the mules: the first section, to Caillet, opened in 1908 and the full line in 1909.

    Did you know? On 14 August 1975 the line carried more than 11,000 passengers in a single day, running 81 round trips.

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20. 20 Ploumanac'h Lighthouse

    Phare de Ploumanac'h

    France48.837° N 3.483° W

    

    The Ploumanac'h lighthouse, officially the Mean Ruz light, stands at the heart of one of the most extraordinary coastlines in France, the Côte de Granit Rose in northern Brittany. Here the shore is a chaos of enormous pink granite boulders, rounded and hollowed by wind and sea into shapes that locals have named for what they suggest: Napoleon's hat, the tortoise, the three brothers. The lighthouse is built of the same stone and seems to grow from the rocks; the Breton name Mean Ruz means simply "red stone".

    Did you know? The interior of the lighthouse is decorated with mosaics by Isidore Odorico, a mosaicist from Rennes.

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21. 21 Eysturoy Tunnel

    Eysturoyartunnilin

    Faroe Islands · 5.4 km from Tórshavn62.075° N 6.785° W

    

    The Eysturoy Tunnel is a piece of infrastructure that became a sight in its own right. Opened on 19 December 2020, it runs for more than 11 km under the Tangafjørður, the sound between the islands of Streymoy and Eysturoy, and also passes under the southern end of Skálafjørður. It is really three tunnels in one: a main bore from Hvítanes near Tórshavn and two branches that come in from either shore of Skálafjørður, meeting beneath the sea at a roundabout about 73 metres below the surface. It is often described as the world's first undersea roundabout.

    Did you know? With a total road length of about 11.2 km, it ranks as the second-longest undersea road tunnel in the world, after Norway's Ryfast near Stavanger.

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22. 22 Olidan Hydroelectric Power Station

    Olidans kraftverk

    Sweden · 1.8 km from Trollhättan58.274° N 12.272° E

    

    Olidan is where Sweden learned to turn its rivers into electricity on an industrial scale. Built by the state from 1905–1906 at the great falls of the Göta älv in Trollhättan, the power station began producing in 1910 and was expanded in stages, with further turbines added by 1914 and 1921; it was for years the largest hydroelectric plant in the country. The organisation created to build it, the Royal Waterfall Board, grew into the state energy company Vattenfall, and the whole region around the falls is often described as the cradle of Swedish power generation. The station is still in operation.

    Did you know? The station takes its name from Olidan, originally two farms on the land where it was built.

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23. 23 G-Cans Flood Channel

    Japan · 34.9 km from Tokyo35.998° N 139.812° E

    

    Fifty metres beneath the rice fields and suburbs of Kasukabe, north of Tokyo, lies a room that people compare to a temple. Its official name is the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel; engineers and fans know it as G-Cans. It was built for one purpose: to take floodwater that the small rivers of the low-lying plain, the Nakagawa, the Kuramatsu and the Ōotoshi-Furutone, cannot hold and send it underground to the far larger Edogawa River. Construction began in the early 1990s, the first section went into partial operation in 2002, and the full system was finished in 2006.

    Did you know? It is considered the largest underground floodwater diversion facility in the world.

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24. 24 Table Mountain Aerial Cableway

    South Africa · 4.8 km from Cape Town33.953° S 18.403° E

    

    The Table Mountain Aerial Cableway carries visitors from the lower slopes of Cape Town's great flat-topped mountain to its summit plateau in about five minutes, and for nearly a century it has been the easiest way to stand on one of the most famous skylines in the world. The upper station sits at the western end of the plateau, at 1,067 metres, with views north over the city, Table Bay and Robben Island and west and south along the Atlantic seaboard.

    Did you know? The floor of each car is a water tank holding about 3,000 litres, which supplies drinking water to the summit and serves as ballast in high winds.

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25. 25 Schilthorn Cableway

    Luftseilbahn Stechelberg – Schilthorn

    Switzerland46.562° N 7.858° E

    

    The cable car from Stechelberg to the Schilthorn is a staircase of ropes climbing out of the steep-walled Lauterbrunnen valley to a summit at 2,970 metres in the Bernese Oberland. Built in stages from 1963, the line opened as far as Mürren and Birg in 1965 and reached the top in 1967, hopping from the valley floor to the cliff-top villages of Gimmelwald and Mürren, on to Birg and finally across a long, airy span to the summit, the longest and most technically demanding section of the original system. It is listed as a Swiss cultural property of national significance.

    Did you know? A location scout for the Bond producers found the Schilthorn in March 1968 after spotting a postcard of its unfinished summit station in a Grindelwald hotel.

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26. 26 Téléphérique de l'Aiguille du Midi

    Téléphérique de l'Aiguille-du-Midi

    France45.918° N 6.870° E

    

    Few machines lift you into another world as abruptly as the Téléphérique de l'Aiguille du Midi. In about twenty minutes it rises more than 2,700 metres from the streets of Chamonix to a needle of granite on the Mont Blanc massif, trading chalets and cafés for glaciers, séracs and the white dome of Mont Blanc itself, seemingly close enough to touch. When the full line opened in 1955 it was the highest passenger cable car in the world, a title it held until 1960, and its vertical rise is still one of the greatest of any cable car.

    Did you know? A cable car to the summit was first proposed around 1909, almost half a century before the line was finally completed.

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