Angkor on top, Taj fifth on 500 places to see on Earth list

Lonely Planet has come up with a list of the world's top 500 sights. Pride of the Cambodian people, the Temples at Angkor topped the list at number one.

Lonely Planet has come up with a list of the world's top 500 sights. Pride of the Cambodian people, the Temples at Angkor, photo below, topped the list at number one. Lonely Planet's Ultimate Travelist highlights the locations around the world that the travel guide publisher's team of experts believes every traveler must experience.

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Registered on Unesco's World Heritage list, the "Hindu Heaven on Earth" is a complex of more than 1,000 temples, shrines and tombs that is considered by Lonely Planet's globetrotting community to top the bucket list of must-see places in the world.

Next on the list is the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland in northeastern Australia. It is the largest living thing on Earth and is even visible from outer space. Whether you are above the water, on it or in it, according to Lonely Planet, the Great Barrier Reef should definitely be on the worthy traveler's bucket list.

Lonely Planet's third pick is Machu Picchu, the Incan citadel set high in the Andes Mountains in Peru. It's the highest ranking sight to behold in the Americas. Also in the top 20 of the Lonely Planet travel list: Grand Canyon National Park in the US (6th), the Iguazu Falls on the Brazil-Argentina border (8), Tikal, the ruins of an ancient city found in a rainforest in Guatemala (14) and the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador (19).

To round out the top 5, the ultimate traveler will head back to Asia, first to see the Great Wall of China, photo above, built across the historical northern borders of China to protect the Chinese states and empires against raids and invasions, and then to the Taj Mahal, photo below, the marvelous white marble mausoleum located in the Indian city of Agra.

Africa and Europe are both poorly represented in the top 20 of Lonely Planet's Ultimate Travelist. Only the medina in Fez (11) represents the former, while the Colosseum in Rome (7) and the Alhambra, a palace and fortress complex located in Granada, Spain (9), represent the latter.