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Some of the world’s most iconic landmarks hold secrets that guides won’t mention, and others may vanish within your lifetime. Discover the untold stories and urgent truths behind these famous sites that you thought you knew.
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00:00If everything had gone according to the original plan, you wouldn't recognize the Washington
00:05Monument today.
00:07The designer, Robert Mills, wanted to create a temple-like building with 30 tall stone
00:12columns and statues of important people from American history.
00:17There would have also been a statue of George Washington riding a horse and a 600-foot tall
00:22Egyptian-style obelisk in the middle.
00:26In 1848, they placed the first stone of the monument in a big ceremony with thousands
00:31of people.
00:32Abraham Lincoln also was there, although he was not yet famous.
00:37They started building, but by 1854, they ran out of money when the monument was only 150
00:43feet tall.
00:44Finally, 22 years later, President Ulysses Grant gave the project federal money to finish
00:51the monument.
00:51By then, tastes had changed, and they decided not to build the temple part of the base.
00:56Since the project had stopped for so long, the stone colors couldn't match perfectly.
01:01That's why the bottom of the monument is lighter than the top.
01:05When it was finished, the Washington Monument was the tallest structure in the world.
01:09But five years later, the Eiffel Tower was built, and the monument had to give away the
01:14champion's title.
01:16Years before the JFK airport started functioning, the Empire State Building was supposed to serve
01:22as one.
01:22Yep, the iconic New York's landmark antenna wasn't designed for King Kong to climb it,
01:28but as a mooring mast for giant airships.
01:31The leader of a group of investors erecting the building, Alfred E. Smith, imagined that passengers
01:36would walk down a ramp and be out on the streets of New York just seven minutes later.
01:41But the man in charge of a famous airship called the Graf Zeppelin didn't think this idea would
01:48work out.
01:48He said that landing a dirigible was very difficult and needed lots of workers on the ground to
01:54help, plus long ropes to tie the airship down.
01:57A dirigible tried to dock at the Empire State Building only once in history in September 1931.
02:05The pilot had to carefully steer the airship around the top of the building for three minutes.
02:10The winds were really strong, blowing at 40 miles per hour, which made it really tricky.
02:16Traffic in the streets below stopped for over half an hour as people watched the airship trying
02:21to land.
02:23Mount Fuji has become one of the symbols of Japan as a mountain peak, but it's actually
02:28formed by three different peaks.
02:31There's a legend that says Mount Fuji was created in one night by an earthquake in 286 before
02:38the Common Era, but geologists believe it's much older.
02:42The first of the peaks began developing about 700,000 years ago.
02:46Two old mountains are part of Fuji's foundation.
02:49About 100,000 years ago, a new part grew on top of these.
02:54The volcano we see today started forming 11 to 8,000 years ago.
02:59Compared to other volcanoes, it is still considered pretty young and active, although the last
03:05time it erupted was over 300 years ago.
03:08Whenever there's a serious earthquake in the area, there's a risk it will erupt again.
03:14Thousands of people still climb it every year.
03:17You could technically live inside the Eiffel Tower if you really wanted to.
03:22Gustav Eiffel designed the tower to feature a private apartment for himself right at the
03:27top of the construction.
03:29He left the place all neat and tidy with warm wallpaper, soft chintzes, wooden cabinets,
03:35and even a grand piano.
03:37These days, the only tenants of the apartment are two mannequins, that of Eiffel himself and
03:43of Thomas Edison.
03:45The famous inventor was a frequent guest in the apartment.
03:48If you buy a ticket to the top of the tower, you can get a sneak peek of the apartment
03:53through
03:53a window as a bonus.
03:56The Statue of Liberty also has a hidden room.
03:59It's in the torch.
04:01This part of the statue is 29 feet long and is made of copper.
04:05It sits on a steel framework that was designed by Gustav Eiffel.
04:09Yes, the same person who created the Eiffel Tower.
04:12Unfortunately, you can't visit the torch as a tourist ever since it was completely closed
04:18back in 1916.
04:20But they placed a camera there in 2011 to allow people to enjoy live streaming of the
04:25panoramic view from the torch.
04:29If you ever pass through Trafalgar Square, you'll surely miss London's smallest police
04:34station since it's hidden beneath a lamp post inside an ornamental light fitting.
04:39The reason why it was placed there back in the 1920s was to let police officers be close
04:45to public rallies.
04:46They happened quite a lot in that area.
04:49Some even said it used to have a direct phone line to Scotland Yard.
04:53It's now used as a cleaning station, so there isn't much to see there, apart from some mops.
05:00It took 14 years to finish the huge profiles of four American presidents.
05:05George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt into the southeastern
05:11face of Mount Rushmore.
05:14If current records are true, there's an incomplete secret room behind Abraham Lincoln's head.
05:19It was meant to become the Hall of Records open for visitors.
05:24It would keep important artifacts and documents of American history, like the Declaration of Independence
05:29and the Constitution.
05:31A year into the construction, the authorities decided it was more important to finish the
05:36president's profiles, so they cut funding for the project.
05:40So the secret room was never finished, and visitors to Mount Rushmore can't see it.
05:45The Paseto di Borgio is a special hidden walkway that connects the Vatican City to a nearby fortress
05:52called Castel Sant'Angelo.
05:55It's around half a mile long and was built in the 13th century.
05:58It was used by popes to escape from the Vatican when they were in danger, and it was used this
06:03way at least twice in history.
06:05A statue of Leonardo da Vinci, located at Rome's Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci Airport, was first
06:12unveiled back in 1960.
06:15During a recent renovation, one of the workers made a mysterious discovery during this process.
06:21He found a small hole somewhere in the middle of the statue, at a height of about 30 feet.
06:27After it was carefully opened, they found two parchments inside.
06:31The first document, written in classical Latin, told the history of the area that now houses
06:36the airport.
06:37The other one had a list of people who attended the inauguration of the statue.
06:42There's a huge network of catacombs under Paris, stretching for around 174 miles.
06:49It's one of the largest grave sites in the world, and brave tourists are allowed to visit
06:54only a small section of it.
06:55But some people managed to get into the restricted passages to throw picnics and parties, and
07:01even start businesses there.
07:04Businesses like a fully functioning movie theater with an underground restaurant and bar.
07:09The law enforcement officers who found it believe it must have been built by some secret society.
07:15Whoever arranged it was trying to hide the entrance, making it look like a construction site.
07:20A motion sensor would set off a video camera, recording anyone who tried to sneak in.
07:26Then, a sound of a barking dog would play, hoping to scare off intruders.
07:31Those who weren't scared away would get into an underground theater with rows of seats carved
07:36into the rock, a big movie screen, and a projector just like in a regular movie theater.
07:42The experts were surprised that the electricity worked so well underground to power it all.
07:46So, a team came back to check it out.
07:49But when they returned, everything had been removed.
07:52The electricity lines were cut, and the items were gone.
07:56All that was left was a note saying,
08:02If you're looking for the coolest accommodation in Paris, you may consider an apartment inside the Eiffel Tower.
08:09When Gustave Eiffel was designing his most famous construction,
08:13he added a private apartment for himself right at the top.
08:16It's rather spacious, especially for Paris, where people often live in apartments 10 times smaller.
08:22It had a workshop, living space, a dining room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and piano.
08:28But there was no bedroom, so it's likely that no one ever slept there.
08:32No one lives there now except for the mannequins of Eiffel himself, his daughter, and one of Thomas Edison.
08:39Members of the scientific community chosen by Eiffel and other notable guests
08:43were allowed to visit the property, and Edison was one of the chosen ones.
08:49Across the pond, the New York Public Library also hosts secret apartments for the staff.
08:54These apartments used to be a normal thing in different library buildings across the city.
08:59But now there are only 13 left out of 30.
09:03One superintendent lived in the library on 42nd Street for many years,
09:07and his own daughter was even born inside that building.
09:10The apartments came in different sizes, and some had up to 8 rooms.
09:14By 2006, the last resident custodian retired,
09:18and now these apartments are used for other library needs.
09:22It's known as the tallest building in the world.
09:25But Burj Khalifa is actually not one, but several constructions connected into one.
09:31It has a Y-shaped plan. And if you look at it from above, it's scary. I mean, it resembles
09:37a spider lily.
09:38It's uber-flexible and can bend a little bit when there are strong winds or even earthquakes.
09:44So it stands safe and strong. Burj Khalifa has over 24,000 windows,
09:49and it takes a crew of 36 people around 3 months to clean the mall.
09:54There's a crypt beneath the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., and visitors pass through it every day.
10:00The first architect of this famous landmark designed it as a grand vestibule,
10:05which means just a big entrance hall. Several years later, plans changed,
10:09and the room was supposed to become the final resting place for George Washington and his wife Martha.
10:15She agreed to it, and architects changed the Capitol plans to add a tomb below the famous rotunda.
10:21They also planned to put a statue of Washington on top, and there was going to be a 10-foot
10:26hole in the
10:27ceiling so people could look down and see his tomb from the rotunda. But Congress couldn't agree on
10:32all the details of this memorial, and the tomb remained empty. Years later, workers closed the
10:39big hole in the floor, which was meant to give light to the tomb because cold air was leaking into
10:43the rotunda. At some point, the crypt was used for bicycle parking. Today, it has statues of famous people
10:50from the thirteen original colonies, and George Washington and his wife are buried out back.
10:55No, actually, they're in Mount Vernon.
10:58There's a hidden clock in a calendar in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican.
11:01The 83-foot obelisk works like a giant sundial, using its shadow to show the time and even mark
11:08special days like the solstices. When the sun is at its highest point in the sky, called solar noon,
11:15the shadow of the obelisk falls on a line of stones on the ground. On the winter solstice,
11:20the shadow reaches its farthest point. On the summer solstice, the shadow is much shorter.
11:25There are also five other special markers that show when the sun enters different zodiac signs.
11:31The long, thin granite line running from the obelisk toward the pope's window shows exactly when it's noon.
11:39British seaside Brighton stands on top of a secret network of underground tunnels with Victorian sewer
11:46systems and a hidden road. They say the tunnels were built below the royal pavilion so that King
11:52George IV could go on, you know, secret dates. History experts say it's not true, and the king
11:58actually used tunnels to keep his servants out of sight when they moved between the pavilion and
12:03the stables. The 30 miles of tunnels are now over 150 years old, and you can see some of them
12:10with an
12:10organized tour. But some parts of them are still in use. One tunnel serves as an emergency relief valve
12:17for heavy rain. Another tunnel has a shooting range inside. The bascule chambers inside the Tower Bridge
12:24are one of the coolest hidden spaces in London. These spacious rooms were built as an operational
12:30center to let the bridge's huge counterweights move for the bridge to open. They were the final
12:35stage in the construction of the bridge. Now, if you're lucky, you can see these chambers on a
12:40special behind-the-scenes tour of the bridge. You'd have to descend 115 steps below water level until you get
12:48into the cold and damp space with rumbling overhead. Sometimes they organize concerts here, and the
12:54acoustics are just perfect. In the early 1930s, there was a real race in New York to construct the
13:02tallest building. Once 40 Wall Street was finished, it won the title. But then the architect of the
13:08Chrysler Building added a spire to its top, and it became the new champion. The spire was waiting all this
13:15time inside the top of the building. Workers had to carefully lift each section of it and assemble
13:21it on top. They used nearly 4 million bricks to finish the whole building and laid them all out by
13:27hand. There were also some elements from Chrysler's automotive empire, like hubcaps, fenders, and
13:33radiator caps. There was a private apartment and office on the top of the building for the founder of
13:38the Chrysler Corporation. They say he liked to brag he had the highest toilet in Manhattan. I'm sure
13:45he was flush with pride. The Capitol Records building in Los Angeles has been sending secret
13:51messages since it opened, and you need to know Morse code to understand them. That secret message is
13:57Hollywood. The light has been sending the same message since the opening in 1956, but it has changed a
14:04couple of times. In 1992, to celebrate Capitol Records' 50th anniversary, it flashed Capitol 50. Then,
14:12before Katy Perry's album release in 2013, the message was also changed, but hardly anyone noticed
14:20the difference. One more fun fact about the building, it was the first circular office building in the
14:25world. Producer Samuel Lionel Roxy Rothefell designed a hidden apartment for himself in the Radio City Music
14:34Hall in New York City. He chose for the apartment, now called the Roxy Suite, to be decorated in the
14:39Art Deco
14:40style. It has 20-foot-high ceilings covered in gold leaf and walls with floor-to-ceiling plush drapes.
14:47Some of the most famous guests of the apartment were Judy Garland, Walt Disney, and Samuel Goldwyn.
14:54Today, it only opens for special occasions and looks exactly the same as it did in 1936.
15:00You might be able to rent it out for a private event, but they say the prices are very high.
15:07Grand Central Station in New York has a great hidden activity for travelers. There are tennis courts in
15:13a secret space named the Annex. This area used to be a recording studio. Now the location is known as
15:20the
15:20Vanderbilt Tennis Club, and you can visit it and play tennis there. The U.S. Supreme Court building in
15:26Washington, D.C., has a secret sports facility where clerks, off-duty police officers, and other
15:33Supreme Court employees can play basketball. This court, I mean the basketball court, is located on
15:39the top fifth floor of the building and goes under the nickname, the highest court in the land.
15:45There's a fun sign next to it saying, playing basketball and weightlifting are prohibited while
15:50the court is in session. Well, we wouldn't want an attempt at justices to, you know, drop everything
15:55they're doing to play a game of horse, but I think that would be fun.
16:00Some things just go together, like popcorn and movies, mornings and coffee, New York and the
16:07Statue of Liberty. I bet you can't imagine Paris without its Eiffel Tower, or India without its
16:14pearly white Taj Mahal. Well, you might have to adjust to a new picture of the world, because these and
16:21many other iconic landmarks will probably disappear in the next decades. And before you jump in a taxi
16:28to the airport to see them all, let's make a list first. The symbol of Paris has been there since
16:351889.
16:37The tower wasn't supposed to last for centuries. They planned to remove it 20 years later. So,
16:43for a lady of her age, the most famous madam is doing pretty well. But since it's made of iron,
16:50her most dangerous foe is corrosion. And if they put the tower in a protective case,
16:55it wouldn't look that beautiful, right? So, it's standing there in the open, exposed to water and air,
17:03slowly oxidizing. The people in charge know about it, but they just keep putting a new layer of paint
17:09on the tower once every seven years. It got a $65 million makeover before the 2024 Olympics in Paris,
17:17but critics say it's not enough to solve the rusting problem. Another thing that's bothering
17:23the tower is the wind, which makes it vibrate slightly. And then there's the sun that heats up
17:28the eastern, southern, and western sides of the tower one by one and makes them expand. When the night
17:35falls, they go back to their original state. So, the top of the tower follows an almost circular curve
17:41every 24 hours. Because of these movements, the metal in the structure weakens and it can become
17:48a problem in the long run. It's like folding an iron wire again and again. It will break at some
17:55point.
17:56It took around 20 years and around 20,000 workers to complete one of the most beautiful constructions
18:03in the world, the Taj Mahal. It was supposed to have a twin brother in black, but that never happened.
18:11Sadly, it's not the worst news about this marble beauty, as there are debates on its demolition.
18:17Yep, one of the new seven wonders of the world could disappear because of excessive vehicles,
18:23burning of coal, dust storms, and forest fires that make the air around it bad, to say the least.
18:29It has made the once-gleaming white marble gradually lose its vibrance and change its color to various
18:36shades of yellow, brownish-black, and green. There is one more problem. Thousands of tiny insects that
18:44appreciate the beauty of the Taj Mahal so much, they chose to make it their residence. They come
18:50straight from the Yamuna River. That's not the cleanest in the world. And products of their active
18:56life in the form of excrement, corrode, and stain the marble. The second problem is that India's
19:02Supreme Court has threatened to shut it down unless the people in charge offer some steps to preserve
19:08the World Heritage Site. I hope they find some solution, or else, where will the 8 million tourists
19:15who come here every year spend their vacation? If you've ever been to Egypt, you must have at least
19:23one photo of yourself pretending to be holding the legendary Sphinx, right? Or am I the only one?
19:29Anyway, the Sphinx in Giza has already lost his nose and we still don't know how or why it happened.
19:36And with centuries of erosion of limestone going under its belt,
19:41the famous giant could disappear altogether in our lifetimes.
19:45There's some serious natural rainwater runoff going on into the west part of the Sphinx because
19:51of its surroundings. Rains are rare in Egypt, but they do happen once in a while. And water isn't the
19:58only problem for Sphinx. Since it's sitting proudly in the desert, the high winds are also a big deal.
20:05They're causing something like sandblasting, like an invisible hand with a tool that's ruining that
20:11delicate, grainy substance. And then, there's also groundwater. It wicks up into porous rocks from
20:18the salt in the soil. Moisture isn't doing such massive constructions any good. The Sphinx and the
20:24pyramids have survived for centuries, but if the elements work against them in an unlucky combo,
20:29these human-made giants will have no chance of winning.
20:33The Statue of Liberty has already had a major makeover since it was first unveiled in 1886.
20:40It used to be a shiny brown color, just like a penny. 20 years later, it changed its color to
20:46green.
20:47Lady Liberty is covered with hundreds of thin copper sheets. When copper reacts with air,
20:54it naturally forms a protective layer called Vitagrees. This layer protects what's under it from
21:00corrosion, and that's why statues and other things made of copper, brass, and bronze can't last so long.
21:05When the statue first turned green, people and authority decided to paint it all over. But the
21:12public didn't love the idea. Experts confirmed they shouldn't repaint it because removing the
21:17protective layer would mean destroying the statue. Lady Liberty still gets a decent amount of rain,
21:23so the chemical reactions continue. The not-so-clean air around it only speeds up those reactions.
21:31New York City does what it can to protect its symbol. Let's see if it's gonna be enough to save
21:37it.
21:37When Machu Picchu in Peru was first discovered in 1911, its explorer thought he had managed to find
21:44the lost city of the Inca. Several decades later, it turned out that it wasn't the same city. But it
21:50doesn't make it any less cool, right? The stones making up the buildings are cut so precisely and sit
21:56together so tightly that you can't even insert a credit card between them. It has saved the city
22:02from serious earthquakes, which are common here. The buildings just dance through all the shaking
22:07and then go back into place. But there's another serious problem, and it's called people.
22:14About 4,000 tourists come here every day and they're physically ruining the ancient ruins.
22:20Local authorities are trying to stop it and suspend visits to some temples and structures.
22:25When the site was closed completely for a month, many locals dependent on tourism got really angry
22:31and spoke up against it. So they need to find some solution to save Machu Picchu without shutting it
22:37down. Hundreds of thousands of tourists try to push it back up for cool photos, but can anyone really
22:45save the Leaning Tower of Pisa from falling over? It started tilting southwards shortly after the
22:51beginning of construction back in the 12th century because of the soft ground under its foundations.
22:57That soil couldn't handle the weight of the heavy white marble and started to go down.
23:02The builders decided to get creative and add each next floor at an angle to fix the tilt, but it
23:09didn't
23:09help. Once three of the eight floors were finished, the tilt was so obviously getting worse that they had to
23:16pause the construction process to solve the problem. When the tower was finally ready,
23:21it tilted at 1.6 degrees. Almost three centuries later, an architect working on it wanted to show
23:28the world the beautiful carvings on its base. He shouldn't have done it because it made the
23:34construction tilt like never before. In the middle of the 20th century, when the tower was already
23:40leaning at 5.5 degrees, Italian officials decided it wasn't funny anymore and invited experts to save
23:48it from completely falling over. They came up with an idea to extract soil from beneath the tower's
23:54northern foundation to put it back in an upright position. This method worked and helped to pull the
24:01tower against the direction of the tilt. The team had to repeat the process over several years at 41
24:07different locations around the tower. I'd probably give up after the third location as I have zero
24:14patience. In May of 2008, the tower finished straightening and finally stood still. Experts think it will
24:23last a while now, but if a strong earthquake intervenes, its future might not be that bright.
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