Machu Picchu Peru

Legendary

This 15th-century Inca citadel is located high above the Sacred Valley on a mountain ridge.

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When Hiram Bingham climbed up to Machu Picchu in July 1911, he found three farming families already living there. They were growing crops on the ancient terraces.

Bingham was an American history professor searching for a different lost Inca city. A local farmer named Melchor Arteaga led him up the mountain, and an 11-year-old boy showed him around the ruins.

Bingham called it a discovery. Local people had known about the place all along.

The Inca built Machu Picchu in the 15th century, in the cloud forest of the Andes in Peru. It sits on a mountain ridge about 2,430 meters above sea level.

Most historians believe it was built for Pachacuti, the Inca emperor who turned a small kingdom into an empire stretching along much of South America's Pacific coast. It was likely his royal estate, a place for rest, ceremonies, and feasting.

The builders shaped huge granite blocks so precisely that no mortar was needed. Many fit together so tightly that a knife blade can't slide between them.

They did it without wheels, iron tools, or draft animals. The stonework has survived centuries of earthquakes.

The city had temples, plazas, homes, and about 200 buildings in all. Water flowed through stone channels to fountains, and farming terraces climbed the slopes.

Around 1,000 people may have lived there at its peak. After the Spanish invaded the Inca Empire in the 1530s, the site was abandoned, and the Spanish never found it.

Bingham took thousands of artifacts back to Yale University. After decades of argument, Peru finally got them back in 2011, a century after he first arrived.

Watch the sunrise over the ruins from the Guardhouse, the classic viewpoint. Look for the Intihuatana, a carved stone the Inca used to track the sun. Book tickets months ahead, since Peru limits daily visitors to protect the site.