Machu Picchu

Where is Machu Picchu?

You will find it in Cusco region, Peru.

13.1633° S, 72.5456° W

The story behind it

Around 1450, the Inca emperor Pachacuti ordered a royal estate built high in the mountains, likely as a retreat, religious site and astronomical observatory rather than a hidden city, as people once believed. Skilled Inca stonemasons and workers built around 200 stone buildings and carved farming terraces into the steep slopes, all without using wheels, iron tools or draft animals. Only about a hundred years later, the Inca abandoned the site as Spanish conquistadors invaded Peru, and Machu Picchu was left to the jungle. Because it sat hidden above the valley, the Spanish never found it, and it stayed largely forgotten by outsiders until an American historian, Hiram Bingham, was guided there by local farmers in 1911. Today visitors climb winding mountain trails or ride a train to see its terraces, temples and plazas still perched dramatically among the peaks.

Find it on the globe

Machu Picchu is there as a little three-dimensional model of the building itself. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.

How was it built?

Inca builders quarried granite blocks nearby and shaped them by pounding with harder stones until each block fit its neighbours almost perfectly, without any mortar holding them together. This dry-stone technique made walls flexible enough to survive earthquakes common in the Andes. Workers moved massive stones using ropes, wooden rollers, levers and ramps, relying entirely on human muscle since the Inca had no wheeled carts. Building the terraces, temples and stairways likely took several decades and hundreds of skilled laborers.