Lion Gate of Hattusa belongs to the years before the Common Era — dated here to c. 1400 BCE at Boğazkale, Anatolia. The date is a scholarly centre of gravity, not a foundation-stone timestamp.
The Hittite capital’s cyclopean walls opened through lions carved in the round, jaws ready, on a highland plateau.
How it was made
Yerkapı ramp, sphinx gate, and underground posterns. Hattusa was a city designed as a fortress-temple.
Why it still counts as a wonder
It never needed a Greek list to be a wonder: the labour, the alignment, or the survival is enough.
When the Late Bronze Age collapsed, the lions kept their posts. They still do.
On dating
BCE in this series means years before the traditional birth of Christ, counted backward. A monument listed as c. 1400 BCE may have been founded earlier, rebuilt later, or famous only in one phase. Where ancient writers disagree — as they do for Babylon’s gardens — we say so.
This is story 42 of 100 in The Trend Ledger’s illustrated desk on world wonders raised before the Common Era.