THE 7 WONDERS OF THE WORLD

Machu Picchu, now one of the 7 wonders of the world,  is a small city in the Andes above the Urubamba Valley, at an altitude of about 8000 feet. Inca ruler built Machu Picchu in the mid-15th century, It appears to have been a sacred, ceremonial city and an astronomical observatory and the largest peak in Machu Picchu, called Huayna Picchu, is known as "hitching post of the sun." 


Most of the 150 buildings in Machu Picchu were built of granite so their ruins look like part of the mountains and many of them had trapezoidal doors and thatched roofs. Smallpox devastated the Machu Picchu before the conqueror of the Inca, the Spaniard Francisco Pizarro, arrived. 

Then in 1911, a Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham discovered the ruins of the city and he made two hypothesis about the use of the city: he made the first in 1911, after he saw the city he thought that it might be the center of the Inca's culture; but he changed his idea and said that maybe was the "lost city" of Vilcabamba la Vieja, where the last rulers made a counteroffensive towards the spanish  conquistadores.
      
In Machu Picchu there are various rare animals that inhabit the area, like the alpaca and over 420 species of bird like the Collared Trogon!!