What is the first place you think of when you hear "Wonders of the World"? My guess is that The Great Pyramids of Egypt are the first thing that comes to your mind. And why shouldn't they? The Great Pyramids of Egypt are almost 5,000 years old, which makes them older than basically every other place on the AbsoluteVisit Top 100 list. For the average person reading this, the Pyramids are thousands of years older than anything you have ever seen in your life. It is rare that we speak of anywhere that was built in BCE (before common era) - the Pyramids were built ~2,500 BCE. They are OLD!

Standing at almost 150 meters tall, the Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest man-made structure on the planet for over 3,800 years. How high would you have to build a skyscraper today for it to stand as the tallest structure on the planet for thousands of years? Our minds cannot even comprehend how unbelievably advanced The Great Pyramids of Egypt were at the time of their construction.

We made our first visit to the famous pyramids in the summer of 2010 while on a long 10-month backpacking trip around the world. We were both immediately blown away by how massive the pyramids were standing in the desert just outside of Cairo. Lots of people we met traveling had told us that the pyramids were small, which left us shocked as we approached them and had the exact opposite impression. For those of you familiar with the Luxor hotel in Vegas (which is basically a hotel modeled after the Great Pyramid of Giza) the real pyramid in Egypt is 40 meters taller and over twice the total volume of the cheesy hotel in Vegas.

A lot of people complain that the Pyramids are too touristy or that they are to close to Cairo (a city with a population that rivals New York City) and not lost in the desert as our childhood cartoons and books led us to believe. Don't let any of these people fool you. There is not a chance in hell that you will visit the Pyramids and be let down. There is not a doubt in our mind that The Great Pyramids of Egypt are one of the most amazing sites you will ever see in your life!

 

• There are three pyramids of Giza (the most famous being the Great Pyramid) built by the pharoah Khufu, his son Khafre, and Menkaure.
• The Great Pyramid took about 23 years to finish, using approximately 2.3 million blocks.
• The blocks used to build the pyramids range in weight from anywhere between 2-70 tons! (1,814-63,503 kilograms)
• There are no hieroglyphics or writing in the Great Pyramid of Giza.
• A common myth of the Great Pyramids is that they were built by slaves, when in fact they were built by tens of thousands of workers who were treated very well, provided with food and good clothing.