Pre-Hispanic City of Chichen-Itza

Twice a year, at the equinoxes, a serpent of shadow slides down the staircase of El Castillo — Maya astronomy performed in architecture at Chichen Itza. Over nearly a thousand years this Yucatán centre absorbed successive peoples, blending Maya building craft with Toltec imagery from central Mexico in monuments like the Temple of the Warriors and the round observatory called El Caracol. UNESCO inscribed the pre-Hispanic city in 1988.