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Machu Picchu
The Inca royal estate on a mountain ridge high above the Urubamba River
Machu Picchu sits on a saddle of rock between two peaks, some 2,430 meters above sea level, with the Urubamba River looping through a gorge far below and cloud forest climbing the slopes around it. The Inca built it in the 15th century as a royal estate, most likely for the emperor Pachacuti, and fitted its granite walls so closely that many joints need no mortar. Spanish chroniclers never recorded visiting it, which spared it the destruction visited on Cusco and other Inca centers. Since a Yale expedition publicized it in 1911, it has become the most famous archaeological site in South America and the destination that brings most international travelers to Peru.
The ruins occupy a ridge in the eastern Andes about 75 kilometers northwest of Cusco, where the mountains fall toward the Amazon basin. About 200 structures cluster on either side of a central plaza: temples, palaces, storehouses, houses and a chain of fountains fed by a spring-fed channel, all set among hundreds of agricultural terraces that also hold the mountain together and drain its heavy rains. Highlights include the curved Temple of the Sun, the carved Intihuatana stone and the Temple of the Three Windows. Huayna Picchu, the steep peak in the classic photographs, rises behind. Most visitors arrive by train at the town of Aguas Calientes and take a bus up the switchbacks, while a few hundred a day walk in on the Inca Trail.
Radiocarbon dating published in 2021 suggests people lived here from about 1420, earlier than the long-accepted date inferred from Spanish records, and the estate was abandoned around the time of the Spanish conquest. Local farmers knew it well before the American explorer Hiram Bingham reached it in 1911. UNESCO inscribed the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu in 1983 for both its culture and its nature, and the 2007 New7Wonders vote added global fame. Crowding is now the central problem. Peru caps daily entry at 4,500, rising to 5,600 in high season, and about 1.5 million people were expected in 2025. In September 2025 the New7Wonders organization warned that poor management put the site's standing at risk, and a 2026 state audit found entries above the cap.