Machu Picchu

Perched atop a dramatic mountainscape between the Peruvian Andes and the Amazon Basin, Machu Picchu stands out as one of the greatest artistic, architectural and land use achievements anywhere in the world, as well as the most tangible legacy of the now lost Incan Civilization.

What is Machu Picchu?

Covering 32,592 hectares of mountain slopes, peaks and valleys, the Citadel or heart of this highly-planned city stands at approximately 7874 feet above sea level. Built in 1450, most archeologists agree that Machu Picchu was originally constructed as an estate for the Incan emperor Pachacuti, later abandoned in 1572 during the Spanish Conquest of the Incas.

Some historians have postulated that the inhabitants may have died from smallpox, which wiped out upwards of 90% of the native South American population after the pathogen’s unwitting introduction by the Spanish Conquistadors.

Discovery of Machu Picchu

For hundreds of years, Machu Picchu sat undisturbed and unknown by the outside world, hidden beneath a cover of moss and tangled vines, and while it was never discovered by the conquistadors themselves, it was discovered in 1911 by a young explorer named Hiram Bingham, who two years earlier had set out to retrace the footsteps of Simon Bolivar, who led many South American countries to independence from the Spanish Empire.

In 1948, now Senator Hiram Bingham published his discovery of Machu Picchu in his best-selling book, The Lost City of the Incas, which laid down a mistaken belief that Machu Picchu was a standalone city rather than a royal retreat. While restoration efforts continue to this day, Machu Picchu is made up of some 200 religious, ceremonial and astronomical structures, along with stone terraces for farming.

The city is divided into a lower and upper part, separating the terraced outer farmlands from residential areas. To this day, the vast majority of Machu Picchu’s mysteries remain unsolved, including the exact role it may have played the the Incas’ unprecedented knowledge of astronomy and domestication of wild plant species. Declared a Peruvian Historic Sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983, in 2007, Machu Picchu was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a global internet poll.