The Inca citadel above the clouds — the most extraordinary archaeological site in the Americas, built at 2,430m on a ridge above the Urubamba gorge by the Inca emperor Pachacuti, lost to the outside world for 400 years
Machu Picchu (the Quechua for 'Old Peak' — the name of the mountain, not the ancient name of the site, which is unknown) is an Inca citadel built circa 1450 CE by the Sapa Inca Pachacuti at 2,430m altitude on a narrow ridge above the Urubamba (Vilcanota) River gorge, 80km northwest of Cusco. The site (UNESCO World Heritage Site, 1983; one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, 2007) consists of approximately 200 stone structures on the main urban core (the Royal Estate hypothesis — the site appears to have been a royal retreat for Pachacuti rather than a city in the sense of an urban center,…
Machu Picchu was built by Pachacuti (the 9th Sapa Inca, 1438-1471 CE — the greatest military and architectural visionary of the Inca Empire, who transformed a regional kingdom into a continental empire and built the major Inca architectural program including Sacsayhuamán, Ollantaytambo, and the Inca Trail network). The Spanish conquistadors who systematically looted and destroyed Inca centers apparently never discovered Machu Picchu — it is not mentioned in any Spanish colonial documents — suggesting it was either fully abandoned before the conquest or that its mountain ridge location made it…