A Definitive Ranking of the Top 10 Sights in the World

Just a handful of votes separates the second and third spots. But they could not be more different . . . Gawking down at Machu Picchu from the Sun Gate after a lung-busting four-day hike along the Inca Trail is a rite of passage for travelers to Peru. But it's not the outrageously dramatic Andean setting nor the way that the city clings to impossibly precipitous slopes that makes Machu Picchu so mind-blowing — it’s the fact that no one really knows what happened here.

You can wander wide-eyed around the mysterious mountain metropolis in a liberating knowledge vacuum, forming your own ideas.