Hidden Secrets of Famous Landmarks: 50 Fascinating Facts

The Eiffel Tower boasts a relatively untouched apartment, designed and placed by Gustav Eiffel, located on the third level. Few people were ever allowed in, as Eiffel turned down every request by wealthy Parisians who wanted to stay the night in it. He used it for quiet reflection, experiments, and entertaining prestigious guests like Thomas Edison. Even to this day, it is rarely open for public viewing.

During the construction of the Great Wall of China, around 400,000 laborers died, and many of them were buried within the wall itself.

The Statue of Liberty, which used to be a lighthouse, has at her feet a broken shackle and chain as she walks forward, commemorating the US's earlier abolition of slavery. The star-shaped base of the statue was originally Fort Wood, built to defend against the British.

The Roman Colosseum had a retractable cloth awning, weighing about 24 tons, held up by a large network of ropes and 240 huge pillars, which covered 30% of the entire Colosseum, providing shade for all of the spectators. In the late 1990s, a man studying the underground chambers of the Colosseum found patterns of holes, notches, and grooves in the walls. By connecting the dots in the negative space, he discovered that a system of elevators had been used to transport wild animals and scenery to the main floor.

It took at least 20,000 people 22 years to build the Taj Mahal. The artisans who worked on the Taj are reputed to have had their hands cut off after the building was completed to prevent them from building a comparable structure.

Stonehenge is only the most famous of more than 1,300 stone rings across the British Isles. Around 4400 years ago, the migration of the Beaker people into ancient Britain led to a near-complete replacement of its earlier inhabitants, who had raised megaliths like Stonehenge. Researchers have found that the placement of the stones seems to correspond to important astronomical events, such as the solstices and equinoxes, but the purpose of these alignments remains unclear.

In Brazil, the Christ the Redeemer statue has a hidden room located within it. Originally intended to be a chapel, the room was never completed and remains inaccessible to the public. It has a big stone hearth in it.

The Tower of London holds a group of resident ravens, and due to the legend that "if the Tower of London's ravens are lost or fly away, the Crown will fall and Britain with it." To ensure the ravens' continued presence, the Tower has kept at least six resident ravens since the 17th century and maintains a reserve bird just in case one leaves. The Tower also holds a secret wooden statue of King Henry VIII with a mechanism in the floor that makes his beloved codpiece swing forth. Additionally, the Tower has a torture cell called "Little Ease," which measures a mere 1.2 square meters and prevented prisoners from settling in any bearable position: they were unable to stand, sit, or lie down.

The Great Pyramid of Giza and the speed of light share an interesting numerical coincidence: the digits in the speed of light are exactly the same as the latitude of the pyramid. The Great Pyramid is located at a latitude of 29.979175°, and the speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s. The difference in latitude is 7.08E-05, or about 25 feet. With a top-down view, the central chamber is indeed around 27 feet south, and the 25-foot mark is somewhere between the antechamber and the King's Chamber.

The Arc de Triomphe contains a secret room beneath its vault that was originally intended to be a chapel but was never completed. Over the years, it has been used for a variety of different purposes.