Heritage with Related Tags
Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu is located at an altitude of 2,430 meters, in a beautiful tropical mountain forest. It is probably the most amazing urban building of the heyday of the Inca Empire; its huge walls, terraces and slopes seem to have been naturally carved out of the continuous rock cliffs. The natural environment is located on the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains, including the upper Amazon River basin, and is rich in flora and fauna.
City of Cuzco
Located in the Peruvian Andes, Cusco developed under the Inca ruler Pachacuti into a complex urban center with distinct religious and administrative functions. It was surrounded by clearly demarcated areas of agricultural, handicraft, and industrial production. When the Spanish conquered it in the 16 century, they retained the basic structure but built Baroque churches and palaces on the ruins of the Inca city.
Chavin (Archaeological Site)
The Chavín archaeological site is named after a culture that developed between 1500 and 300 BC in the high valleys of the Peruvian Andes. This former place of worship is one of the earliest and most famous pre-Columbian sites. Its appearance is striking, with a complex of terraces and plazas surrounded by dressed stone buildings, mainly decorated in zoomorphic shapes.
Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia
It is an outstanding example of a sustainable and productive cultural landscape, unique in its own right, representing a tradition that is a striking symbol of coffee-growing regions around the world - covering six agricultural landscapes, including 18 urban centres in the foothills of the western Andes and the central cordillera in the country. It reflects a centuries-old tradition of growing coffee in small plots in high forest, and how farmers have adapted to difficult mountain conditions. The urban areas are mainly located on relatively flat hilltops above sloping coffee fields, and their architecture is Antioquian colonial style with Spanish influences. Building materials were, and in some areas still are, corn cobs and pleated rattan for walls, with clay tiles for roofs.
Sewell Mining Town
Located 2,000 meters above sea level in the Andes Mountains, 60 kilometers east of Rancagua, in an extreme environment, the mining town of Sevier was built in 1905 by the Braden Copper Company to house workers for what would become the world's largest underground copper mine, El Teniente. It is an outstanding example of company towns that emerged in many remote parts of the world by fusing local labor with the resources of industrialized countries to mine and process high-value natural resources. The town was built on terrain too steep for wheeled vehicles and is organized around a large central staircase that rises from the train station. Irregularly shaped formal plazas along the way, complete with ornamental trees and plants, form the town's main public space or plaza. The buildings that line the streets are of wood, often painted in bright green, yellow, red and blue. In its heyday, Sevier had 15,000 residents, but was mostly abandoned in the 1970s.
Qhapaq Ñan, Andean Road System
The site is a vast network of 30,000 km of roads built by the Incas for communication, trade and defence. Built over centuries by the Incas, partly on pre-Inca infrastructure, this extraordinary road network traverses one of the most extreme geographical terrains in the world, linking the snow-capped peaks of the Andes (over 6,000 metres above sea level) to the coast, passing through parched rainforests, fertile valleys and deserts. It reached its greatest expansion in the 15th century, spanning the entire Andes. The Qhapac Ñan Andean Road System includes 273 constituent sites spread over more than 6,000 km, which have been selected to highlight the social, political, architectural and engineering achievements of the network, as well as its associated trade, lodging and storage infrastructure, and sites of religious significance.
Río Abiseo National Park
The park was established in 1983 to protect the rainforest flora and fauna that are unique to this area of the Andes. The flora and fauna in the park have a high degree of endemism. The yellow-tailed woolly monkey, previously thought to be extinct, is found only in this area. Research conducted since 1985 has led to the discovery of 36 previously unknown archaeological sites at altitudes between 2,500 and 4,000 meters, which provide a good picture of pre-Inca society.
Los Alerces National Park
Los Alerces National Park is located in the Andes Mountains in northern Patagonia, with its western border coinciding with the Chilean border. Successive glaciations have shaped the landscape of the area, creating spectacular features such as moraines, glacial cirques and clearwater lakes. Vegetation is dominated by dense temperate forests and high up in the Andes with alpine meadows. Its most distinctive and iconic landscape is the Alerces Forest; the globally endangered Alerces tree is the second oldest tree species in the world (over 3,600 years old). The Alerces Forest is well preserved on the property. The property is vital for the conservation of the last remaining almost pristine forests in Patagonia and is home to many endemic and endangered species of plants and animals.
National Archeological Park of Tierradentro
The park contains several colossal statues of human figures and numerous catacombs dating from the 6th to the 10th century. These huge catacombs (some chambers are up to 12 meters wide) are decorated with motifs that recreate the interiors of houses of the time. They reveal the social complexity and cultural wealth of pre-Hispanic societies north of the Andes.
Quebrada de Humahuaca
The Humahuaca Valley was a major Inca route, following the spectacular valley of the Rio Grande for about 150 km from its source in the cold desert plateau of the high Andes to its confluence with the León River in the south. The valley has abundant evidence that it was a major trade route for the last 10,000 years. It bears clear traces of prehistoric hunter-gatherer communities, the Inca Empire (15th-16th centuries) and the struggle for independence in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Sacred City of Caral-Supe
The 5,000-year-old archaeological site of Caral-Supe is a 626-hectare site located on a dry desert terrace overlooking the green valley of the Supe River. Dating back to the Late Archaic period in the Central Andes, it is the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. The site is well-preserved and impressive for the complexity of its design and architecture, especially its massive stone and earthen platforms and sunken circular courtyards. Caral is one of 18 urban settlements located in the same area, with complex and magnificent architecture, including six large pyramid structures. Knots (a system of knots used in Andean civilizations to record information) found on the site attest to the development and complexity of Caral society. The planning of the city and some of its components, including pyramid structures and elite residences, clearly indicate ceremonial functions, suggesting a strong religious ideology.
Tiwanaku: Spiritual and Political Centre of the Tiwanaku Culture
The city of Tiwanaku was the capital of a powerful pre-Hispanic empire that ruled a large area in and around the southern Andes, reaching its peak between 500 and 900 AD. Its magnificent ruins bear witness to the cultural and political significance of this civilization, which was distinct from other pre-Hispanic empires in the Americas.