Monuments and archeological pieces serve as testimonies of human greatness and establish a dialogue between civilizations showing the extent to which human beings are linked.
~ Vicente Fox

When Gustave Eiffel sent his proposal for a certain tower to the design competition for the International Exposition of 1889 commemorating the centennial of the French Revolution, the design was protested by, among others, Guy de Maupassant, Alexander Dumas, and Emile Zola who called it “the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower.” Yet the work has become the icon of Paris, setting of over 200 films. Likewise, who would travel to India without a pilgrimage visit to the famed Taj Mahal? What do the great monuments of history reveal about the human destiny, aspiration, and culture?

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G. Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.