Discovery Channel Seven Wonders of Ancient Egypt (2007)

At the dawn of history, the ancient Egyptians showed the world how to build the impossible… In an age before machines, when copper was the strongest metal yet discovered, great pharaohs like Khufu and Ramses II demonstrated how boundless ambition and vast quantities of human labour could transform rock and stone into some of the most incredible monuments ever created from carving out spectacular tombs in the Valley Of The Kings to the building of the iconic Great Pyramid.

Able to inspire wonder and awe in all who gazed upon them, The Seven Wonders of Ancient Rome - the Pantheon, the Aqueducts of Rome, the Via Appia, the Baths of Caracalla, Trajan's Markets, Circus Maximus and the Colosseum - were the works of great men who translated fantastic visions into the epitome of human achievement. These visionaries included ambitious Emperors like Hadrian and engineers with revolutionary ideas such as Apollodorus. By the second century AD, Rome had become the 'caput mundi' - the head of the world.

Two statues, a temple, a hanging garden, two tombs and a lighthouse. This selection of monuments became known as "The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World". There are probably few who could list them right away, are even fewer who know something about each of them or the reasons for which they were labeled as Wonders. Six of those seven were destroyed by forces of nature, or by human hand. Each episode in this series describes one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and we see besides the monuments themselves the people who designed and built them, with the vision to create something wonderful.

Mecca, the city that welcomes close to a quarter of a million pilgrims every fortnight, and the birthplace of Islam's founder. The Seven Wonders of the Muslim World meets the man who massages the weary feet of the faithful, the muezzin who makes the call to prayer and the head of the religious police. The programme also talks to the pilgrims as they arrive in Mecca, to help understand the thinking of modern Muslims and their deep connections with this holiest of Muslim shrines.

In this fascinating documentary, historian Bettany Hughes travels to the seven wonders of the Buddhist world and offers a unique insight into one of the most ancient belief systems still practised today. Buddhism began 2,500 years ago when one man had an amazing internal revelation underneath a peepul tree in India.