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To answer your questions, we did a Yahoo! search on the "Taj Mahal." The results were good, yielding a category for the famous building and a blues singer of the same name. We clicked on the Buildings and Monuments > Taj Mahal category and set out to determine what makes this landmark so special. Several of the sites in the category offer beautiful photographs of the monument, but it wasn't until we read through Taj Mahal, Agra that we
learned the 17th century building, constructed as a tribute by Shah Jahan to his late wife, is made almost entirely of marble. We found additional details about the building materials at Taj Mahal: Mausoleum of Mumtaz Mahal, including several images of floor plans. As for the Taj's status as a wonder of the world, it seems that the jury is still out on that. According to a great site we found, the official list known as the "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" includes: - the Great Pyramid of Giza
- the Hanging Gardens of Babylon
- the Statue of Zeus at Olympia
- the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
- the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
- the Colossus of Rhodes
- the Lighthouse of Alexandria
Check out the site for a great annotated list of each of these wonders. While apparently the Taj doesn't qualify for the "ancient" list, it does get included on many of the longer lists of manmade wonders. Strangely, the Taj Mahal often seems to get mentioned as a forgotten wonder, a designation that hardly seems accurate since people have been in awe of the building's beauty since its creation.
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