Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu is a stone city built by the Inca civilisation more than 500 years ago, perched high in the Andes mountains of Peru. It was probably abandoned just a hundred years after it was built, and was almost completely unknown to the outside world until 1911. Today it is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world and the most visited tourist site in South America.
- CountryPeruIn the Andes mountains of South America
- Altitude2,430 metresAbout 2.5 km above sea level
- Builtapprox. 1450 ADDuring the reign of Inca emperor Pachacuti
- BuilderThe Inca civilisationWithout metal tools, the wheel or writing
- Abandonedapprox. 1572 ADAround the time of Spanish conquest
- Rediscovered1911By American explorer Hiram Bingham
How high is Machu Picchu?
Machu Picchu sits approx. 2.5 km above sea level. High enough that visitors sometimes get altitude sickness from the thinner air.
What is Machu Picchu?
Machu Picchu is a complex of approx. 200 stone buildings, terraced fields, temples, fountains and stairways, built on a steep ridge between two mountain peaks. The site covers around 5 square km and contains palaces, religious buildings, storehouses, simple homes, and an extraordinary set of stepped agricultural terraces carved into the mountainside.
Who were the Incas?
The Inca empire was the largest civilisation in pre-Columbian (before Columbus) America. At its peak in the early 1500s, the Inca controlled an empire stretching approx. 4,000 km along the western side of South America, from southern Colombia down to Chile. The capital was at Cusco, approx. 80 km from Machu Picchu. The Inca were extraordinary engineers and stonemasons. They built thousands of kilometres of paved roads, suspension bridges, terraced farmland, and stone cities, all without writing, the wheel, or iron tools.
How was Machu Picchu built?
Machu Picchu was built around 1450 by the Inca emperor Pachacuti. The exact purpose is still debated, but most archaeologists now think it was a royal estate or retreat for Pachacuti and his family. The Incas chose a difficult, steep location and shaped it to fit their needs.
The buildings are constructed from granite blocks cut precisely to fit together without any mortar. The largest stones weigh over 50 tonnes. The Incas shaped the stones using harder stones as hammers, fitting each block to its neighbours by trial and error. The result is so tight that even after 500 years of earthquakes you cannot fit a knife blade between the stones.
Why was it abandoned?
Machu Picchu was used for only approx. 100 years before being abandoned around 1572. The likely reason is the Spanish conquest. In 1532 the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro arrived with a small army of around 168 men and conquered the Inca empire, helped by European diseases (mostly smallpox) that killed enormous numbers of Inca. The Inca elite of Cusco was destroyed, and the population that had built and maintained sites like Machu Picchu was scattered or wiped out. The site was hidden in the dense mountain forest and forgotten by the outside world for over 300 years.
Rediscovery
Local Peruvian people had always known the ruins were there. They were "rediscovered" for the outside world in 1911 by an American history professor named Hiram Bingham. A local farmer guided him up the mountain to the overgrown stones. Bingham photographed the site and published an article about it in National Geographic magazine in 1913, which made Machu Picchu world-famous overnight.
Deeper dive: Inca engineering, the Inca Trail and modern preservation
Inca stonework was extraordinary. The largest blocks at Machu Picchu were quarried from a nearby site, cut roughly to shape with stone hammers and bronze tools, transported using rollers and ramps, then fitted together using a technique called ashlar construction. The blocks at the most important buildings (such as the Sun Temple) interlock with neighbours on multiple faces, sometimes with curves cut to fit specific neighbouring stones. The walls slope slightly inward, which makes them remarkably stable in earthquakes. Modern attempts to reproduce this stonework using modern tools have struggled to match the precision the Inca achieved with stone, bronze and patience.
Machu Picchu is part of a much larger Inca road and trail network called the Qhapaq Ñan, the Inca Road, which once linked together the entire Inca empire from Colombia to Chile. The total network may have been over 40,000 km long, including suspension bridges across river gorges (some still in use today) and supply post-houses (tampu) every day's walk. The four-day modern hike to Machu Picchu, called the Inca Trail, follows a small surviving section of this network. The number of hikers on the Inca Trail is now strictly limited, around 500 per day, to protect the route.
Modern preservation of Machu Picchu is increasingly challenging. UNESCO has warned that the site is at risk from too many visitors (over 1.5 million per year), unstable mountain slopes that could lead to landslides, and uncontrolled development of nearby Aguas Calientes (the town at the bottom of the mountain that hosts almost all visitors). In 2017 the Peruvian government introduced timed entry tickets and one-way circulation rules. In 2020 the site closed entirely for several months during the COVID-19 pandemic, giving it an unexpected rest.
The country is Peru. Another famous mountain landmark is the Great Wall of China.