Wonders of the World — One Scroll from Giza to the Burj Khalifa

Wonders of the World — one continuous scroll through 4,500 years

Wonders of the World is a single horizontal world you scroll through. Thirty-four landmarks sit along it in order of when they were built — from the Pyramids of Giza (c. 2560 BC) to the Burj Khalifa (AD 2010) — and the camera is yours to move.

Scroll, drag, or press the arrow keys. Tap any stop and the world glides to it. There is no play button: the scroll is the camera.

What is on the scroll

Every stop is a hand-painted pixel-art diorama, drawn in the same palette and the same scale, with its date, its place and one line of its story in the corner:

• Ancient — Pyramids of Giza & the Great Sphinx · Stonehenge · the Hanging Gardens of Babylon · the Temple of Artemis · the Parthenon · the Statue of Zeus at Olympia · the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus · the Colossus of Rhodes · the Lighthouse of Alexandria · the Great Wall of China · Al-Khazneh, Petra · the Colosseum · Hagia Sophia
• Medieval & early modern — Borobudur · Chichén Itzá · Angkor Wat · Notre-Dame de Paris · the Leaning Tower of Pisa · the Forbidden City · Machu Picchu · St. Basil's · Himeji Castle · the Taj Mahal · the Potala Palace
• Modern — Big Ben · Neuschwanstein Castle · the Statue of Liberty · the Eiffel Tower · Tower Bridge · the Empire State Building · Christ the Redeemer · the Golden Gate Bridge · the Sydney Opera House · the Burj Khalifa

How the world is built

The scroll is one continuous strip with no cuts. Between two neighbouring stops, ground, sky and horizon blend over a shared band — one biome fading into the next, one time of day into the next — so no join is ever visible.

• Sky and light run on the same axis. Each stop carries its own hour: dawn at Giza, sunrise at Stonehenge, noon on the Great Wall, late afternoon at Petra, dusk at the Taj Mahal, night at the Burj. Drag between them and the whole sky, the sun and the shadows travel with you.
• Night brings its own world. Once the hour darkens, windows light up across the towns and cities, and the stars and moon come out over Corcovado and Dubai.
• The scene is alive. Figures walk the streets, birds cross the sky, water shimmers and jumps at fountains, weather drifts in, and fireworks go up over the skyline in the evening.
• Drawn in pixels, scaled by whole numbers. The whole panorama renders to a low-resolution buffer and scales up by integer factors, so it stays crisp and full-screen on any display — and every frame is drawn live on a canvas, no images.

Play

Open it and scroll. Wheel, drag, arrow keys (or A/D), Home and End to jump to the ends. Click a tick on the timeline to travel to that wonder.

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中文简介

《Wonders of the World》：一条可以横向拖动、无限延展的像素长卷，把 34 处世界地标按建造年代依次排开——从公元前 2560 年的吉萨金字塔，到 2010 年的哈利法塔。滚轮、拖拽或方向键都能推进镜头，点时间轴上的任意一刻即飞过去；相邻两景之间天光与地面共享一段过渡，所以整条长卷毫无剪辑痕迹。每处景点都是一幅像素立体模型，附年代、地点与一句故事，天色随所处年代一同变化：吉萨的黎明、长城的正午、泰姬陵的黄昏、哈利法塔的夜。