National Geographic has named Cville and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello as one of their 10 "World Wonders"!

HOLY WAHOO!! National Geographic has named Cville and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello as one of their 10 "World Wonders"!

Virginia: Renaissance Land

Photograph by Leonard Phillips, Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello

When Thomas Jefferson traveled, he collected wine and books—and also ideas that would change the course of history. Nowhere is the electricity of his imagination brighter than within the academical village of the University of Virginia and at Monticello, Jefferson’s plantation home in the rolling Piedmont region of Virginia. “Monticello pays homage to Palladio and Old World neoclassical architecture,” says Leslie Greene Bowman, president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which runs the estate. Though the Founding Father’s plans were rooted in those ideals of antiquity, his adaptations signaled the inventive pragmatism of his young country. Completed in 1809, Monticello debuted designs for skylights, round windows, and a domed room. Jefferson had a knack for novelties, from wine dumbwaiters to a rotating clothing rack. “He carved off a mountaintop for Monticello and included terraces and Venetian porches to take advantage of the views,” says Bowman. He also pioneered wine cultivation in the fertile land around his estate. Though such experiments bore little fruit in his lifetime, today the Virginia wine industry thrives. The Jefferson laboratory lives on.

This and other UNESCO World Heritage sites are featured in “2012 World Wonders” in the August/September 2012 issue of National Geographic Traveler.