Istanbul's iconic Maiden's Tower among world's most photographed attractions

The world is full of iconic sights ranging from the Empire State Building to the historic Big Ben National Park but what about the most photographed world attractions? According to a top 20 list prepared by ParrotPrint via the interactive "heat map" known as Sightsmap, the Maiden's Tower, located on Istanbul's Anatolian side, came in fifth place.

The Guggenheim Museum, the modern and contemporary art gallery which stole the title as New York's most photographed attraction, ranks first on the list followed by The Trinita dei Monti, a Roman Catholic, late-Renaissance church in Rome, Barcelona's Park Güell which offers a spectacular, panoramic view of the city carefully positioned on Carmel Hill and France's Moulin Rouge, one of the most widely known establishments in the world and the birthplace of the modern form of the can-can dance.

The list also reveals how many times each sight has been hashtagged on Instagram. Namely, it shows that the Guggenheim Museum was hashtagged 282,942 times, the Trinita Dei Monti church 167,671 times, and the Park Guell 224,126 times. Although the Maiden's Tower ranks as the fifth most photographed attraction, it was hashtagged 444,766 times, more than the top four attractions. The top 20 also includes Ponte Dell'Accademia, one of the four bridges in Venice spanning the Grand Canal and built entirely from wood, the Hotel de Paris in Monaco which offers the best view over the FI Grand Prix track, the Niagara Falls in the U.S., the famous Piccadilly Circus in London, the Great Pyramid in Egypt and the Coit Tower in San Francisco. Located on the Bosporus Strait, the Maiden's Tower (Kız Kulesi in Turkish) has remained an age-old symbol of love and romance in Turkish culture.

"The original tower was built to control the movement of Persian ships on the Bosporus; however, the tower that stands today has been greatly restored," the list says. The Maiden's Tower has served many different purposes over the years, functioning as a tax collection area, a defense tower, and a lighthouse. During the cholera epidemic in 1830, it was used as a hospital and even as a radio station. The tower was handed over to the Ministry of Defense in 1964 and then to Maritime Enterprises in 1982. It has undergone extensive renovations and currently functions as a restaurant that is owned by a private company and open to the public.