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Most people don't know how much these landmarks have evolved over time

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From Stonehenge to the Parthenon, these landmarks looked much different back in the day

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"From Stonehenge to the Parthenon, these spots once looked much different" (72 ch)

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Stories of icons

What these landmarks used to look like may surprise you

We know that the Statue of Liberty wasn’t always turquoise green; it was originally copper colored, but the salt and air naturally oxidized it. But did you know that the Eiffel Tower wasn’t originally gray, either? Have you ever seen a photo of the marsh that once surrounded Lincoln’s Memorial? Let’s explore what some world-famous landmarks used to look like —and see if we would recognize them.

When Lady Liberty was unveiled in New York Harbor on October 28, 1886, she wasn’t the sea-green icon we know today. She was the color of a brand-new penny. It took nearly 30 years of exposure to salt air, ocean spray, and coastal weather to transform her copper skin into the blue-green patina that eventually became her signature.

By 1906, the discoloration had become noticeable enough that Congress actually debated repainting her. The sculptor himself, Frédéric Bartholdi, had expected the copper to darken to a deep reddish-brown, not green. He never saw the version the world now considers iconic.

The most famous sign in the world was never supposed to be permanent, nor as meaningful as it has become. When it went up on the slope of Mount Lee in 1923, it was a billboard which read "HOLLYWOODLAND," commissioned to advertise the real estate development "on the Hollywood side of the hills." The broader neighborhood was already called Hollywood, but "Hollywoodland" was its branding name.

In the end, it outlasted the development itself. Locals had gotten so used to the view of the popular sign that in 1944, it was purchased by the City of Los Angeles. In 1949, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce agreed to restore it, on one condition: to cut costs, the last four letters, "LAND," had to go.

Known to the Lakota Sioux as "Six Grandfathers," this mountain was a sacred site on a spiritual route. The granite cliff was untouched. In 1884, it was renamed "Rushmore" in 1884 after Charles E. Rushmore, a New York lawyer on a prospecting trip who asked what the mountain was called and was told it could have his name.

Construction for the monument began in 1927. For the next 14 years, more than 400 workers hung from steel cables on the mountainside, using dynamite to blast away over 450,000 tons of rock while earning $8 a day. The sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, died in March 1941 and never saw the project completed.

The image of the Great Sphinx rising fully from the desert floor is, historically speaking, very new. For most of the 4,500 years since it was carved, the Sphinx's body (240 feet long, 66 feet high) lay buried beneath desert sand. Only its head and shoulders were visible.

When Napoleon arrived in Egypt in 1798, he found it buried to the shoulders. A Genoese adventurer tried to excavate it in 1817 with a team of 160 men, but the sand poured back in nearly as fast as they could dig.

It wasn't until Egyptian archaeologist Selim Hassan led a sustained excavation between 1925 and 1936 that the Sphinx was fully revealed for the first time in modern history. That’s the open-air way it has looked for less than a century.

The Eiffel Tower has been many different colors over its lifetime. When its iron parts were being assembled in Gustave Eiffel's workshop in 1887 and 1888, they were painted a bold Venetian red. By the time it opened for the 1889 World's Fair, it had been repainted a deep reddish-brown.

Three years later, it turned ochre. To sum up, it has been repainted 20 times in its 136-year life, cycling through yellow-brown, brownish-red, and the "Eiffel Tower brown" most visitors know today.

The Iron Lady currently boasts a yellow-brown, which was applied for the 2024 Paris Olympics to evoke its original color. The lighting system still in place today was inaugurated in 1985, when 336 sodium-vapor lights were installed in its structure to transform the tower itself into a source of light.

Did you know that the Lincoln Memorial was built on land reclaimed from tidal swampland at the edge of the Potomac River? Early photographs from the beginning of the 20th century show the foundation surrounded by murky, reed-filled water; a far cry from the dignified marble plaza and long Reflecting Pool that greet visitors today.

The Reflecting Pool itself wasn't completed until 1923, a year after the Memorial was dedicated. For the dedication ceremony in May 1922, the land was still raw and unlandscaped. It was attended by Lincoln's 79-year-old son, Robert Todd Lincoln, one of the last living direct connections to the president.

In 1904, the intersection now known as Times Square was called Longacre Square, a modest uptown neighborhood of carriage makers, horse stables, and low-rise commercial buildings. It was renamed when The New York Times moved its headquarters to a new 25-story tower there and persuaded the mayor to rename the block in the paper's honor.

It’s hard to recognize the world-famous hub without neon, billboards, or throngs of tourists.

When the Taj Mahal was commissioned by Emperor Shah Jahan in 1632, he chose the location specifically because the Yamuna River curved sharply there, creating a broad, calm surface that would mirror the white marble mausoleum in a beautiful reflection.

Historical records show that massive foundations were built to stabilize the soft riverbank and protect the structure from the river's natural flow. As late as the 1890s and early 1900s, pictures show the Yamuna as a wide, shimmering river framing the monument exactly as Shah Jahan intended.

But today, that river behind the Taj has been depleted due to upstream dams and canals, and what’s left looks cloudier because of industrial pollution and sewage.

It’s easy to assume that ancient Greek buildings and statuary were pearly-white like the marble we see today. But the truth is that, like similar buildings, when the Parthenon was completed in 438 BC, it was painted in vibrant colors.

Scientific analysis using ultraviolet light and laser scanning has found clear traces of Egyptian blue, red ochre, and green malachite across the friezes, columns, and sculptures. The pigments were mixed with beeswax and applied by hand to every surface.

The ruin we know today is the result of 2,400 years of weather, war, and awkward restoration.

The Stonehenge we see today is merely a ruin in fragments. The original structure, completed around 2500 BC, was an unbroken double ring: an outer circle of 30 upright sarsen stones.

There once was a continuous ring 100 feet across, with 80 bluestones arranged inside it. Only 17 of the original 30 outer uprights still stand, but it’s enough to suggest reconstructions like the one illustrated.