Chichen Itza

The New Wonder of the World and the finest surviving Maya urban complex, Chichen Itza's El Castillo pyramid, Great Ball Court, Tzompantli skull platform, and Sacred Cenote form a coherent ritual landscape spanning a 400-year period of Maya and Toltec cultural fusion. The equinox serpent shadow effect — when 91 steps on each face of El Castillo create a shadow that appears as a descending feathered serpent — is the most precisely engineered astronomical spectacle in the Americas.