Consider the popularity of books such as 1,000 Places to See Before You Die and 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die. Well, now the staff of Smithsonian, has come up with a list of twenty-eight must-see places:

. Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, southwest Colorado
. Pompeii, the Roman port city
. Tikal, the ancient city in Guatemala
. Petra, in Western Jordan
. The Pyramids of Giza, rising from the Nile's west bank
. Taj Mahal, India
. Easter Island 's 1K statues (2,000 miles off of South America)
. The Great Wall of China
. Aurora Borealis, with best viewing around the fall and spring equinoxes
. Serengeti (esp. Mara River crossings in Kenya in September and October)
. Iguazu Falls, near where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet, seen best January through March.
. Machu Picchu, atop the Urubamba Valley in Peru, especially at sunrise
. The Louvre, Paris (esp. Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory)
. Zen Garden, Kyoto
. Uffizi Gallery, Florence
. Fallingwater, the personal residence in SW Pennsylvania designed by Frank Lloyd Wright
. Yangtze River, starting at Shanghai
. Antarctica, permanent population: 0
. Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, East Africa
. The Grand Canyon, Arizona
. 3,000 temples dotting a 30-square-mile plain in Myanmar (formerly Burma)
. The Parthenon, Athens
. Angkor Wat in Cambodia
. Ancient Ephesus in Turkey (photo, right)
. Venice
. Amazon Rain Forest, spanning eight South American countries
. Great Barrier Reef, Australia
. Galapagos Islands