You may have visited one of these landmarks - if you're lucky, you've seen them all. They make a city instantly recognisable even when they're on their own.
But they weren't always around and for the cities they now call home, things looked very different before their arrival.
Take a journey around five of the world's most recognisable landmarks and see them as you've never seen them before, maybe learning a fact or two about them on the way.
First up, let's head to France.
Eiffel Tower
To get the basics out of the way: The tower opened in 1889 and stands 324m, that's just four metres shorter than Auckland's Sky Tower.
The tower was built as part of Paris' World Fair and was only meant to stay there for 20 years, but authorities changed their mind and it remains there more than 130 years later.
For a period in the 1920s the tower was used as a billboard, advertising car company Citroen. There were 250,000 light bulbs and 600km of electric cable used to create the giant Citroen sign, with each letter measuring 30m high.
Statue of Liberty
The statue is 93m tall and is in fact officially titled The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World.
Overlooking New York City, Lady Liberty is a powerful symbol. Also very powerful are the more than 600 lightning bolts that strike her every year.
The statue was given to the US by France in 1886. Its head had been on display at Paris' World Fair before it was taken to New York.
As well as a torch, Liberty is holding a tablet. Not one made by Samsung or Apple, but one made of stone with the date of America's Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 inscribed on the top.
Sydney Opera House
The iconic building's architect, Jørn Utzon, never got to see the completed project with his own eyes. Part way into the building process there was a change in state government and the new premier decided to slash the building's budget, so Utzon resigned and left Australia, never to return.
When the building was opened by the Queen in 1973, there was not a single mention of Utzon's years of work on it.
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building opened in May, 1931 - just three months after the historic earthquake that destroyed Napier here in New Zealand.
The tower is 443m high and has 102 storeys. And, after 89 years, it has plenty of stories too.
The very top of the Empire State Building was designed to be a mooring mast for airships, which at the time were thought to be a major player in the future of transport.
In 1945, the building was hit by a B-25 bomber travelling at 320kph. Low fog had confused the pilots who were travelling to La Guardia Airport. Both crew were killed, as were 11 people inside the building.
The fire was put out within 40 minutes and most of the building reopened just two days later.
The tower was built in record time, taking only one year and 45 days to build. That's a rate of more than four floors a week.
The Empire State Building's design isn't entirely original. The architect behind it used the design of a building he had recently finished in North Carolina called the Reynolds Building, as a framework for how this tower would look. The strikingly similar looking Reynolds now gets a Father's Day card from the Empire State Building every Father's Day.
Burj Khalifa
The home city of the Burj Khalifa, Dubai, didn't even exist when the Empire State Building was constructed. The building towers above the city at 829m high, a good two and a half times the height of Auckland's Sky Tower.
It will remain the world's tallest building for now, but the planned Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia will eventually take that title when it's completed. It's final height is open-ended with no exact figure given, but it's said to ultimately stand more than one kilometre high.
During the Burj Khalifa's construction, 12,000 people worked on the site every day.
The building has the third-fastest elevator in the world. It travels at 10 metres per second, taking one minute to get from the ground floor right to the top.
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