Could this be among the new Seven Wonders of the World?

The Egyptian pyramids at Giza are the only structures still remaining from the original list of seven architectural marvels likely to be retained on the new list. Long gone are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos lighthouse off Alexandria.

The Colosseum, the Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal and Petra in Jordan are among the leading contenders to make the new list while the Acropolis and the Statue of Christ Redeemer, which stands on a mountain overlooking Rio di Janeiro, are also strong contenders.

The Statue of Liberty in New York and Sydney Opera House are unlikely to make the top seven with Angkor in Cambodia, the Alhambra in Spain, Turkey's Hagia Sophia, the Kiyomizu Temple in Japan, the Kremlin and St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, Germany's Neuschwanstein Castle, Stonehenge and Mali's Timbuktu also struggling to make the cut.

The ancient city of Petra in south-western Jordan, popularised by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and famous for its water tunnels and stone structures carved in the rock, has attracted many votes, largely thanks to campaigning by the Jordanian royal family and thousands of Jordanians voting by text message over their mobile phones.

Choosing world wonders has been a continuing fascination over the centuries with Unesco continuing to update its list of World Heritage Sites, which now totals 830 properties.

The new Seven Wonders of the World campaign was begun in 1999 by Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber, with almost 200 nominations coming in from around the world.

Weber felt it was "time for something new to bring the world together" and to "symbolise a common pride in the global cultural heritage".

His Swiss-based foundation aims to promote cultural diversity by supporting, preserving and restoring monuments, and relies on private donations to keep it going.

The number of nominations for the new Seven Wonders of The World was pared down by internet and telephone voting to 77 last year.

Then the campaign assembled a panel of architectural experts, chaired by the former Unesco chief Federico Mayor, which shortened the list to the final 21. Interest has been growing this year as Weber and his 10-member team visited the 21 sites, which will be reduced to seven at a series of meetings in Lisbon over the weekend.

In May, the Channel Tunnel was named as one of the Seven new Wonders of the World in a poll. Voters selected Sydney Opera House as the top new wonder, followed by the Eiffel Tower.

Third in the www.tele-textholidays.co.uk poll was the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, which is shaped like a sailing vessel.

In a separate poll asking people to name the top seven UK wonders, Big Ben was first, with the new Wembley Stadium seventh. Second in the UK list was the Eden Project in Cornwall, with the London Eye third and Buckingham Palace fourth. There were no Scottish entries in the poll.

In the running...

• The Great Wall of China, the 4160-mile barricade running east to west. The longest man-made structure in the world.

• Hagia Sophia, a cathedral, also called the Church of Holy Wisdom, built in 537AD at Constantinople, now Istanbul .

• The Kremlin and St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, the former a medieval fortress converted into the centre of Russian government, the latter a cathedral built by Czar Ivan the Terrible and famed for nine onion-shaped domes.

• The Colosseum in Rome, a giant amphitheatre inaugurated in 80AD by the Emperor Titus, which was an arena where thousands of gladiators duelled to the death and has influenced design of modern stadiums.

• Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany, the inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland.

• The Acropolis, on a flat-topped hill above Athens, which draws around a million visitors each year to walk among its fifth century-BC marble temples and statues of Greek gods and goddesses.

• Stonehenge in Wiltshire, the circular monument of massive rocks created between 3000BC and 1600BC.

• The Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain, the residence of the Moorish caliphs who governed southern Spain in splendour until King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled them in 1492, ending 800 years of Muslim rule.

• Kyoto's Kiyomizu-dera temple in Japan, which was founded by the Hosso sect of Buddhism in 798 and rebuilt in 1633 after a fire.

• Sydney Opera House, which was opened in 1973 by Queen Elizabeth II.

• The Pyramids of Giza, constructed around 2500BC, with the great pyramid built as a tomb for the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu.

• Angkor in Cambodia, the archeological site in Siem Reap, 143 miles north-west of the capital Phnom Penh, which was the capital of the Khmer (Cambodian) empire from the ninth to the 15th century.

• The Taj Mahal in India, a white marble-domed mausoleum in Agra which was built by Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan between 1632 and 1654 for his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal.

• Timbuktu in Mali, where two of West Africa's oldest mosques, the Djingareyber, or Great Mosque, and the Sankore mosque built during the 14th and early 15th centuries can still be seen at the ancient city in the northern Sahara Desert.

• The ancient city of Petra in south-western Jordan, famous for its water tunnels and numerous stone structures carved in the rock.

• The 38-metre (125-foot) tall Statue of Christ Redeemer, whose outstretched arms overlook Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

• Easter Island in Chile, where hundreds of massive stone busts, or Moais, are all that remain from the prehistoric Rapanui culture that crafted them to represent deceased ancestors.

• Machu Picchu in Peru, whose giant walls, palaces, temples and dwellings were built by the Incan Empire in the 15th century - 2430 metres (8000 feet) above sea level on an Andean mountaintop.

• The 300-metre (985-foot) high Eiffel Tower (5) in Paris, built by the engineer Gustave Eiffel for the city's International Exposition of 1889, which has become its symbol.

• The pyramid at Chichen Itza in Mexico, which was part of one of the greatest Mayan centres of the Yucatan peninsula.

• The Statue of Liberty in New York, which has towered over the city's harbour since 1886 and was dedicated as a gift from the French government, welcoming immigrants and Americans returning from abroad.