The 20 Oldest Known Photos of Iconic Landmarks
Daniel Bonfiglio
Published
09/21/2024
in
wow
Even though some of the famous landmarks on this list have been around for thousands of years, photography has only been a thing since the mid-1800s.
That means that no matter how old the Great Pyramids really are, someone somewhere was the first person to point a camera at them. (The answer is actually a pair of French men named Horace Vernet and Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet.)
Here are the oldest known photos of some of the world's most historic places.
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The earliest known photograph of the White House, by John Plumbe, Jr., 1846. -
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Thomas Child photographs the Great Wall of China’s Nankou pass in 1870. -
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One of the oldest photographs of Rome and the Colosseum by Richard Jones in 1846. -
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This photograph of the Routh family enjoying a day out at Stonehenge in 1875 might be the landmark’s oldest known photo. -
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Photo from the second Powell Expedition on the Colorado river at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in 1871. There were no photos from the first expedition, making this one of the canyon’s earliest photos. -
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The Eiffel Tower under construction, 1878. -
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One of the earliest photos of Yosemite Falls in 1861, by Carleton Watkins. -
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The earliest known photo of the Chernobyl disaster, taken by the power plant's photographer, dawn of April 26th, 1986. -
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The leaning tower of Piza in 1898. -
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In 1884, the Statue of Liberty was photographed in Paris, France, just before it was disassembled and shipped to New York. -
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The Pyramid of Cheops in Giza, 1839. One of the earliest photos in Africa, and the first of the pyramids. Taken by Horace Vernet and Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet. -
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The Great Sphynx by Maxime du Camp in 1849. -
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Dr. John Murray, View of the Taj Mahal in Agra India, 1856. -
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Photo by Howard Somervell on the last day of the 1921 Mount Everest Reconnaissance expedition. -
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Edmund Hillary took this photograph of Tenzing Norgay as they became the first people to set foot on the summit of Mount Everest. 29th of May, 1953. -
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Christ the Redeemer in 1931. -
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The earliest known photo of the Acropolis by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey in 1842. -
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William M. Frej took some of the first photos of the Mayan pyramids and other pre-columbian ruins in the 1870s and 80s. -
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Temple Chichenitza by Maudslay, 1900. -
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Times Square, then Long Acre Square, circa 1898-1900.
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