Photographs and licences
A place belongs to nobody, but a photograph of it belongs to whoever took it. Here is how we handle that.
Every photograph on this site comes from Wikimedia Commons and is used under the licence its photographer chose. A place cannot be owned by anyone, but a photograph of that place belongs to whoever took it, and we treat it that way.
What we use, and what we do not
- Public domain and CC0. Used freely. No credit is required, so none is shown.
- CC BY and CC BY-SA. Used with the photographer's name and the licence printed under the photograph.
- Anything else. Not used. Photographs marked fair use, non-commercial or no-derivatives are filtered out automatically and never reach a page.
Where you see a small line under a photograph reading something like "Photo: name, CC BY-SA 4.0", that is the credit the licence asks for. Where you see no line, the photograph is in the public domain.
If a credit is wrong
Credits are read automatically from the file's own record on Wikimedia Commons. That record is occasionally incomplete, and where it is, the credit will say "Unknown author". If you took a photograph we are using and the credit is wrong, missing, or you would like it worded differently, write to hello@toptenwonders.com and we will correct it.
Removal requests
If you hold the rights to an image on this site and you want it taken down, tell us which page it is on and we will remove it. We will not argue the point with a photographer about their own work. Send the request to hello@toptenwonders.com with the page address and enough detail to identify the image.
Text and maps
Factual information such as location, altitude and country is drawn from public reference sources. Facts themselves are not owned by anyone. The writing on this site is our own and is not copied from those sources.