The Sagrada Familia is set to become the tallest religious building in Europe when the latest stage in its decades-long construction - the raising of six new towers - is complete. The Antoni Gaudi-designed cathedral, which already dominates the Barcelona skyline, will take the mantle from the Ulm Minster in Germany when the highest of its towers is in place. The Tower of Jesus Christ will be 172.5 meters tall, according to the cathedral's chief architect, Jordi Fauli, who announced that his aim was to have the new towers in place by 2026 - the centenary of Gaudi's death. In what is one of the longest-running construction projects undertaken, the foundation stones of the Sagrada Familia were first laid 133 years ago in 1882. Mr Fauli, who became the chief architect in 2012, declined to give an absolute date for the building's eventual completion. "It's difficult to predict but we can say that it will be completed by 2030, 2032," he said. He said that about 70 per cent of the construction was completed. In March of this year the cathedral chief architect announced that 3D printers 3D models of the building, following Gaudi's designs. The announcement coincided with the beginning of the final phase of raising the six towers. The Tower of Jesus Christ will be crowned by a cross at its highest point, while the other five towers are dedicated to the Virgin Mary and the four apostles. The main tower is designed to rise above the cathedral's central chamber, which until 15 years ago did not even have a roof. Only one of the facades was completed by the time of Gaudi's death in 1926. St Peter's Basilica in Rome will remain the tallest internal religious structure in Europe. The Sagrada Familia has survived the Spanish Civil War, the Franco dictatorship and the meltdown of the Spanish economy during the recent debt crisis. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the cathedral annually attracts more than 3.2 million visitors, who help to pay for the annual construction budget of US$ 28 million.

Italy has earmarked over US$ 20 million to rebuild the arena floor in the Colosseum where gladiators once fought wild beasts, Culture Minister Dario Franceschini announced. The idea is that the arena could be used once more to house events and perhaps even re-enactments of spectacular Roman-era shows, while the area below where the beasts, scenery and props were kept would be turned into a museum. The planned arena reconstruction will not affect 48-meters high Colosseum walls, which continue to break down. The biggest amphitheater built during the Roman Empire, the Colosseum stands 48.5 meters high. In Rome times, up to 80 thousand spectators would throng there to see gladiator greats such as Carpophores -- who reportedly defeated a bear, lion, leopard and rhinoceros in one battle -- or cheer on mock sea battles held in the flooded arena. It now welcomes over six million visitors a year. Besides the Italian Government, in Colosseum restoration are engaged also philanthropists. Long-delayed repairs, funded to the tune of US$ 27.8 million by Italian billionaire Diego Della Valle, began in 2013 and are expected to be finished in early 2016. The Colosseum undertaking is just one of the country's US$ 89 million cultural maintenance projects, which includes US$ 20 million to update the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, $7.7 million to update Turin's Polo Reale museum, and $5.5 million to expedite the progress of Pisa's forthcoming museum of ancient ships.

China is famous for its "duplitecture," but one recent example, a larger-than-life-sized replica of the Sphinx, outraged Egypt so much that it called on UNESCO to issue a cultural cease and desist. The structure will now be demolished. The fake Sphinx was built in a cultural park in Shijiazhuang, in China's northern Hebei province, and reportedly took only a couple of months to construct. It's about 30 meters high and 80 meters long, and built out of steel-reinforced cement. A park spokesperson says the Sphinx was only built as a movie props and was always intended to be temporary anyway. Temporary or not, the fake Sphinx certainly drew a crowd, with street food vendors popping up around it to take advantage of the tourist trade. However, Egyp's minister of antiquities, Mohammed Ibrahim, said the replica Sphinx contravened UNESCO's 1972 Convention and is "a violation of Egypt's rights to its cultural heritage and a bad imitation that disfigures the original." Ouch! The park's spokesperson counters that "We did not use it for commercial purposes and did not charge fees from visitors, nor do we intend to make it a tourist attraction," but the park has agreed to dismantle the structure anyway and regrets the misunderstanding. Anyone knows that China is famous for its duplitecture. But did you know that there's a faux Eiffel Tower in China, as well as an entire copy of the city of Venice, complete with gondola-lined canals? In the past few years, builders in China have replicated world-famous buildings and landmarks at a remarkable pace - from the world's first cloned Austrian mountain village to reproductions of the White House, entire English villages and even new architect designs that haven't been built yet, like Zaha Hadid's Wangjing Soho complex. Recently Officials in a Beijing suburb have sidestepped President Xi Jinping's crackdown on government waste by building themselves a lavish office complex reminiscent of the Kremlin. Mentougou, a largely rural district in western Beijing with some 270 thousand residents, is now home to a group of government buildings with onion-shaped golden crowns, arched windows and white walls similar to the Cathedral of Annunciation, the five-century-old Russian Orthodox Church located inside the Kremlin in Moscow. In 2007 Chinese architects copied the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the famous fountain in the gardens of the Palace of Versaille to make their own version of the French capital. Famous buildings and Parisienne style gardens are surrounded by rows of European-style villas in a special gated community called Tianducheng just outside Shanghai. Tianducheng's Eiffel Tower is 108 meters high. China has pulled off a feat that no other country would even dream of achieving: a cloned village. Every detail of the original Hallstatt village, a UNESCO protected heritage gem in Austria, has been copied in a replica situated one hour outside of Huizhou in Guangdong Province. China Minmetals Corporation announced their US$ 940 million plan to re-create the secluded hamlet in June, 2011, and just one year later in 2012, the place opened to visitors. Architect Zaha Hadid's Wangjing Soho complex in China has been praised by designers around the world. The design is so beloved that another developer in Chongqing is ripping it off! Designs of the three-building complex were released in 2011 and construction is already underway, but that hasn't stopped the rival developers from moving forward on a two-building version. Called the Meiquan 22nd Century, the design was clearly lifted from Hadid's plans, and now the two sites are racing to complete construction first. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but Zaha Hadid may not agree with this pirated project. Her original design is a complex of three pebble-shaped curvilinear volumes, in true Hadid signature style. The Meiquan complex, although only having two buildings, is unmistakably similar to the Hadid project, and comes close to a direct copy.

In 2008, a construction team building a new expressway linking Shenmu county and Yulin city, both in Shaanxi province, found the remains of an ancient wall buried in the ground. The ruins were only 30 centimeters high. Archaeologists later learned that the wall belonged to a section of the Great Wall of China, and they discovered more ruins. To protect the new discovery, the local government decided to dig a tunnel under the walls for the new expressway to pass. Now China's cultural protection authority will end the trouble to change the construction plan at the last minute since some of the Great Wall has been found - the authority has figured out the length and location of all of the walls. Last week, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage published its latest survey result, which said the Great Wall measures 21,196.18 kilometers, almost 2.4 times the widely believed estimation of 8,851.8 km, reported The China Daily. The survey was performed jointly by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation. "The previous estimation particularly refers to Great Walls built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), but this new measure includes Great Walls built in all dynasties," said Yan Jianmin, office director of the-China Great Wall Society, an NGO founded by specialists and scholars to protect the Great Wall of China. Archaeologists and mapping experts conducted field surveys in 15 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions including Heilongjiang, Hebei, Beijing, Shaanxi and Xinjiang, and found 43,721 sites related to the Great Wall. Using historical records, artifacts and information from locals, Li and his colleagues unveiled small parts of the Great Wall that had long been forgotten by people. The survey is only the first step in a larger project to protect the Great Wall. The State Administration of Cultural Heritage launched a protection project in 2006, and planned on a long-term maintenance map to be completed before the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15) period. The Great Wall was first built during the reign of China's first emperor Qin Shihuang (259-210 B.C.) to keep out foreign invaders. The municipal government of Jiayuguan in northwest China's Gansu province on November 18, 2011 kicked off a repair and construction project focused on the western end of China's Great Wall, reported Xinhua.

The municipal government of Jiayuguan in northwest China's Gansu province on November 18 kicked off a repair and construction project focused on the western end of China's Great Wall, reported Xinhua. The project will involve repair work on the sections of Great Wall in the city of Jiayuguan, including the Jiayu Pass - the starting point of a section of the Great Wall constructed during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). It also includes the construction of a world cultural heritage theme park and a heritage inspection center. The project will have a total investment US$ 317 million, mostly financed by the central government. Built in 1372, the Jiayu Pass also served as a vital passage on the ancient Silk Road. It was listed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1987. The pass underwent large-scale repairs and maintenance in 1984. The Great Wall was first built during the reign of China's first emperor Qin Shihuang (259-210 B.C.) to keep out foreign invaders. A national survey in 2008 showed that the exact length of the Great Wall built in the Ming Dynasty was 8,851.8 km, stretching from the Hushan section in northeast Liaoning province to the Jiayu Pass. The Great Wall passes through 10 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in northern China, including Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu and Qinghai.