Machu Picchu

Built around 1400, Machu Picchu is one of the world's most impressive historical sites. Located in the Andes Mountains of Peru, at 8,000 feet above sea level, the "City of the Incas" was mysteriously abandoned and forgotten for centuries until local farmers led Yale University historian, Hiram Bingham, to the site in 1911.

Today, there are about 140 structures standing in Machu Picchu, despite the passage of time. In an amazing feat of engineering, the Incas constructed their buildings with carefully carved stones held together by gravity alone -- no mortar was used. Machu Picchu also features imaginative agricultural terraces built with topsoil hauled from the valleys below to grow crops, as well as a complex irrigation system that delivered fresh spring water from structure to structure.

Perched in a magical setting among the magnificent, snow-capped Andes, Machu Picchu is not only one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, as voted in a worldwide Internet poll, but a timeless symbol of the Incan people and a must-see for anyone planning a trip to Peru.