Machu Picchu, meaning Old Mountain in quechua, is often referred as "The Lost City of the Incas" or "The City in the Clouds". This Inca site is located 44 miles NW of Cuzco, above the Urubamba Valley ("The Sacred Valley") at 7 970 feet on a mountain ridge and surrounded by schrouding tropical rainforest. In fact the name Machu Picchu refers specifically to the lower quarter of this awesome stone citadel, believed to have been built as resting place for Inca ruler Pachacutec, who also built the city of Cuzco and transformed the small Inca kingdom into the oustandingly powerful Tahuantinsuyo. Other theory suggestss that Machu Picchu was an Incan settlement built up to control the economy of the conquered regions and that it may have been built with the purpose of protecting the most select of the Incan aristocracy in the event of an attack.
The highest sector of the site is the Huayna Picchu Mountain, towering 100 feet over the citadel like a giant sentinel. Hundreds of feet below, on the opposite site of the citadel, the white water Vilconata bends around the mountain's base.
The entire citadel's construction uses the classic Inca architectural style of polished dry-stone walls of regular shape. The Incas mastered this technique, called ashlar, in which blocks of stone are cut to fit together tightly without mortar. The junctions in the central city are so perfectly fitted that not even a knife can be inserted between the stones.
The Incas have never been known for using the wheel in any practical manner. How they moved and placed gigantic blocks of stones is a mystery, although the general belief is that they used hundreds of men to push the stones up inclined planes. So far, it is unknown if the Incas left behind any records about this process.
Machu Picchu is composed of 140 constructions including temples, sanctuaries, parks and residences, houses with thatched roofs. There are more than one hundred flights of stone steps - often carved in a single block of granite - and a great number of water fountains, interconnected by channels and water-drainages perforated in the rock, designed for the original irrigation system. Evidence has been found to suggest that the irrigation system was used to carry water from a spring, to each of the houses in turn.
Machu Picchu was constructed around 1450 AD, at the height of the Inca empire, and was abandoned less than 100 years later, as the empire collapsed under Spanish conquest. Although the closeness of the citadel to Cusco, the Inca capital, it was never found and destroyed by the Spanish, as were many other Inca sites.
The PERU TOURISM PROMOTION BOARD invites you to take a virtual tour of Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu Rediscovery
In 1911, Yale historian and explorer Hiram Bingham brought the "lost" city to the world's attention. Bingham began the archaeological studies there and completed a survey of the area. It was him who coined the name "The Lost City of the Incas", which was the title of his first book.
At the time of the "rediscovery", Bingham had been searching for the city of Vicos, the last Inca refuge and spot of resistance during the Spanish conquest of Peru. In 1911, after various years of previous trips and explorations around the zone, he was led to the citadel by Quechuans who were living in Machu Picchu in the original Inca infrastructure. Bingham made several more trips and conducted excavations on the site through 1915. Nevertheless, there are some doubts about Bingham being the first modern world explorer to have found the Inca citadel. Simone Waisbard, a long-time researcher of Cusco, claims Enrique Palma, Gabino Sánchez and Agustín Lizárraga left their names engraved on one of the rocks there on July 14, 1901. Likewise, it is said that in 1904 an engineer named Franklin spotted the ruins from a distant mountain. Franklin told Thomas Paine, an English Plymouth Brethren Christian missionary living in the region, about the site. In 1906, Paine and another Brethren missionary named Stuart E. McNairn (1867-1956) climbed up to the ruins. Five years later, in 1911, Paine met Bingham gave him directions and outfitted him with guides and mules for journey to the site.
What makes Bingham the "rediscoverer" of Machu Picchu is the fact that he was the one who brought Machu Picchu to the world's attention, turning the Inca Citadel into the best known Peru's cultural icon.
In 1913, the site received significant publicity after the National Geographic Society devoted their entire April issue to Machu Picchu.
In 1981 an area of 325.92 square kilometres surrounding Machu Picchu was declared a "Historical Sanctuary" of Peru. This area, which is not only limited to the ruins themselves, also includes the regional landscape with its flora and fauna, highlighting the abundance of orchids.
The site was designated as a World Heritage Site in 1983 when it was described as "an absolute masterpiece of architecture and a unique testimony to the Inca civilization".
On July 7, 2007, Machu Picchu was voted through interantional contest as one of New Open World Corporation's New Seven Wonders of the World.
100-Anniversary Celebration (2011)
Machu Picchu's centennial celebration viewed by 500 million people
Bingham's first photos of Machu Picchu One of the water fountains as it was found then
