Where in the World?

Maitreya Buddha at the Likir Gompa (temple) in Ladakh, India

Love and laughter. . . January’s picture shows the 25-meter-tall statue of the Maitreya Buddha at the Likir Gompa (temple) in Ladakh, India. Maitreya is also known as “the laughing one” and “the compassionate, loving Buddha.”

Five readers sent in correct answers, and RICHARD WALKER of La Jolla, California, won the drawing. We thank Anita Lees of Vista, California, for sending us the photo.

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War Memorial in Akaroa, New Zealand

Thomas P. McKenna of Montpelier, Vermont, sent in the photo shown in the March issue: the War Memorial in Akaroa, New Zealand, east of Christchurch on the South Island.

McKenna writes, “This place is really at the end of a dead-end road.”

It must not be a “road well traveled” by our readers; only seven correct guesses were received. DEBORAH A. LARSON of Lansing, Michigan, won the drawing.

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Skara Brae, Orkney Islands, Scotland

THIS OLD (really, really old) HOUSE — July’s picture shows the 5,000-year-old remains of Skara Brae, a Neolithic village near Kirkwall on Pomona Island, one of the Orkney Islands, Scotland.

Those Stone Age designers all must have subscribed to the same version of Architectural Digest, because some of our readers were sure they’d seen these ruins in France, on Easter Island, in French Polynesia or in Troy!

Forty-six people sent in the correct answer. Kudos to the winner of the drawing, DOROTHY M. FELS, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

We thank Tressie...

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Zion's Church, Ilulissat, Greenland

One of the northernmost churches in the world, Zions Kirke (Zion's Church), is located approximately 220 miles north of the Arctic Circle in western Greenland. The subject of our January 2017 mystery photo, the church, built in 1782 and restored in 1907, is in the town of Ilulissat, next to Disko Bay.

To cover its building costs, local residents collected dozens of whales and over 200 barrels of whale oil between 1777 and 1779. Over a century later, part of the church was turned into a hospital. In 1929, the building was moved inland and expanded.

The nearby Ilulissat...

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Town hall of Auvers-sur-Oise, France

From the terrace outside his second-story room at an inn in the French town of Auvers-sur-Oise, Vincent van Gogh painted one of his final canvases: “Auvers Town Hall on 14 July 1890.” The Impressionist depiction of the town hall, painted just two weeks before the artist's death, closely mirrors the image in our June mystery photo (upper left), which was taken from almost the same vantage point as the artist's (lower left).

Because van Gogh stayed in the town during the last two months of his life — and created dozens of paintings during that time —...

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Arc de Triomphe

Those who make it up all 284 steps leading to the top of Paris' Arc de Triomphe are rewarded with a panoramic bird's-eye view of the city. The viewing platform at the top of the arch, as seen in our November 2016 mystery photo, is just 40 steps above a museum displaying exhibits that celebrate the arch's construction.

Tucked inside the structure's huge, 164-foot-high and 148-foot-wide arch, the museum also features scenes from Napoleon's life. Thirty years before the arch was completed in 1836, Napoleon had commissioned the building's construction in order to...

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Aliaga (Aliagha) Vahid, once known as a "master of satiric poetry" in his native Azerbaijan, is the person portrayed in the August issue's mystery photo. Sculpted in 1990 by Rahib Hasanov, the approximately 10-foot-tall bronze bust stands in a small garden area of the Icheri Sheher (Inner City) section of Baku, Azerbaijan. Embedded in the hair of this unique sculpture are allegorical figures.

Aliaga Vahid was actually a pseudonym for Aliaga Isgandarov, who began writing and publishing poems in his late teens. Later, he helped translate Persian literary works into the...

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Five hundred years after it was built in the 16th century, visitors to the Vittala Temple complex in Hampi, Karnataka, in southern India, can still see the Stone Chariot, the subject of the September issue’s mystery photo.

Also known as the Kallina Ratha, the shrine was built during the rule of King Krishnadevaraya, considered one of the greatest kings of the Vijayanagara Empire. It is believed that the king got the idea for the shrine’s construction after seeing the 13th-century Konark Sun Temple (also built in the form of a chariot) in the eastern Indian state of...

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