- Where
- Eastern Cordillera, southern Peru
about 80 km northwest of Cusco - Coordinates
- 13.1631° S
72.5450° W - Biome
- Cloud forest and Andean valley,
subtropical highland climate - Elevation
- 2,430 m
Cusco, by comparison, is at 3,400 m - Occupied
- About 1420 to 1532,
by radiocarbon (Burger and others, 2021) - Status
- UNESCO World Heritage, 1983
Peruvian Historic Sanctuary, 1981 - Visitors
- Over 1.5 million in 2025
daily limit 4,500, up to 5,600 at peak
Woke in the dark, rode a bus that zigzagged up into cloud, and watched the cloud tear open on a green ridge with grey stone stairs climbing across it. Long-necked animals were mowing the terraces and looked entirely too pleased about it. Far below, a brown river looped round the foot of the mountain, and I stood at the edge trying to remember what I had expected.
The short answer
Machu Picchu is a fifteenth-century Inca estate on a mountain ridge at 2,430 metres in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru, about 80 kilometres northwest of Cusco, above a deep canyon of the Urubamba River. It is thought to have served as a royal estate for the emperor Pachacuti, though no contemporary written record confirms that. AMS radiocarbon dates on the remains of 26 people buried around the site, published in Antiquity in 2021 by a team led by Richard Burger of Yale, place its occupation from about 1420 to 1532, and it was abandoned around the time of the Spanish conquest. Peru made the surrounding 325.92 square kilometres a Historic Sanctuary in 1981, and UNESCO listed the site in 1983. It is Peru’s most visited international tourist destination, with over 1.5 million visitors in 2025.
Why it's worth knowing
You know the picture. Here are three things it leaves out.
The name may be wrong. In a 2021 paper in Ñawpa Pacha, the historian Donato Amado Gonzales and the archaeologist Brian Bauer argue that the Inca town was called Picchu, or more likely Huayna Picchu, after the smaller peak beside it, and that “Machu Picchu” became attached to the ruins through Hiram Bingham’s publications from 1911. Their evidence is Bingham’s own field notes, the place names on older maps, and colonial documents. It is their conclusion, not a settled convention, and this entry uses the familiar name because the familiar name is the one on the ticket.
It was not found in 1911. In 1902 the Peruvian explorer Agustín Lizárraga reached the ruins and wrote his surname and the year in charcoal on the central window of the Temple of the Three Windows. When Bingham arrived in 1911, guided by a local farmer, Melchor Arteaga, he found the signature, and it appears in his own early photographs. Two Quechua farmers, Richarte and Alvarez, were already working some of the terraces. Bingham’s pocket journal calls Lizárraga the discoverer; by the time of his last account, Lost City of the Incas (1952), he claimed the find for himself.
It was not a lost city. On the evidence, Machu Picchu was a royal estate where about 750 people lived, most of them permanent retainers, with religious specialists and temporary workers; in the harsher winter, staffing dropped to a few hundred. Genome-wide studies of the people buried there find Andean, coastal, Ecuadorian and Amazonian ancestries living, reproducing and being buried together. And the dating has moved: the older chronology, built on the reign of Pachacuti, put construction at about 1450, while Burger’s dates start the occupation two decades or so earlier.
The field notes
Picchu, Huayna Picchu, or neither
In Quechua, machu means old, wayna (huayna in Spanish spelling) means young, and pikchu a summit. The site lies on a saddle between two peaks, Machu Picchu, “old peak”, and the smaller Huayna Picchu, “young peak”. Those are names of mountains, and Amado Gonzales and Bauer’s argument is that the town was named for one of them, not that the mountain names are wrong. The paper’s documentary trail, as its authors’ university summarised it, runs from a Spanish record of 1588, in which people of the Vilcabamba region said they wanted to return to Huayna Picchu, through a 1715 reference to “the ancient Inca town of Huayna Picchu”, to a 1904 atlas that marks the ruins under that name, seven years before Bingham arrived.
None of that changes the mountain. It changes what the ruin was called by the people who lived there, and it is a reminder that a name can arrive with a publication.
Who found it, and where the finds went
Bingham was a Yale lecturer, not a trained archaeologist, and went to Peru in 1911 looking for the last Inca capital, Vilcabamba. He did not find it here. He did find Vitcos, and at Espíritu Pampa he found jungle ruins so overgrown that he could note only a few buildings; in 1964 Gene Savoy explored the full extent of that site and identified it as Vilcabamba Viejo.
Bingham returned in 1912, 1914 and 1915 with Yale and National Geographic backing and took thousands of objects to Yale: pottery, silver statues, jewellery and human bones, supposedly for study over 18 months. He acted under Peru’s 1852 Civil Code, which gave finds to their discoverer except on private land. Local institutions accused him of malpractice. Yale kept the collection until 2012, arguing that Peru could not care for it. In November 2010 Yale agreed to return the disputed pieces, and the third and final batch was delivered in November 2012. They are now shown at the Machu Picchu Museum in Casa Concha, in Cusco.
An estate, not a lost city
The terraces at the site cover about 4.9 hectares, mostly for maize and potatoes, which is too little to feed 750 people. Studies of the food the residents ate suggest much of it was brought in from the surrounding valleys and farther away. Analyses of the skeletons show that most residents were immigrants from diverse regions; the bones of llamas and alpacas at the site probably came up from the high puna.
Excavations recorded about 104 caves and rock shelters used for burial around Machu Picchu, holding about 174 individuals, interpreted as largely retainers of varied origins, not the Inca elite. There is little direct evidence of human sacrifice at Machu Picchu; the offerings that are found are mostly of camelids.
Built on the cracks
The central buildings are classical Inca dry masonry: blocks cut to fit without mortar. The site sits over fault lines, and the suggestion Wikipedia records is that this may have been deliberate: the fractured rock gave a supply of ready-broken stone and natural drainage. The geologist Rualdo Menegat describes it as an empire of fractured rocks.
The terraces are as much drainage as farmland. The area has had more than 1,800 millimetres of rain a year since about 1450, and the terraces were built in layers, with large stones at the bottom, gravel above, packed sand and gravel above that, and topsoil on top, apparently moved up from the valley floor. Kenneth Wright’s excavations in the 1990s established the sequence. In 2005 and 2009 the University of Arkansas laser-scanned the whole site.
A great many people
Visitor numbers have risen from the 1911 expedition to over 1.5 million in 2025. Stricter entrance rules came in July 2011, at 2,500 a day; a new entrance system followed in 2018; and in 2024 the limit was raised to 4,500 a day, with up to 5,600 in peak season. UNESCO considered putting Machu Picchu on its List of World Heritage in Danger in 2017 over overcrowding, and decided against it. Floods in January 2010 trapped more than 4,000 people, and protest blockades on the routes in 2023 closed the site from 22 January to 15 February.
The citadel on its ridge, with the Urubamba canyon below.
Photograph: Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0
Inca dry-stone masonry: blocks cut to fit without mortar.
Photograph: Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0
Machu Picchu in 1912, photographed on Hiram Bingham’s expedition.
Photograph: Hiram Bingham III · Public domain
The agricultural terraces, about 4.9 hectares in all, built to drain as much as to farm.
Photograph: joiseyshowaa · Farming Terraces at Machu Picchu · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped
- Go in early and let the cloud do what it does.
- Find the three windows and stand for a while where somebody else stood first.
- Walk it as somebody’s town, not as a set. Stay on the path; it costs nothing to.
- Give your legs a slow day up high before the climb. The air notices you.
- Leave without adding the rest of the valley to the list. (Failed on the train down.)
A stone that, on two days a year, all but loses its shadow. The Intihuatana is a carved ritual stone on a terraced hill in the upper part of the site; its Quechua name, probably given by Bingham after a similar stone at Pisac, is usually translated “place where the sun is tied”. It stands at about 13°10′ south, inside the tropics, so twice a year the noon sun passes almost directly overhead: by the sun’s declination, in late October and again in mid-February. At the June solstice its longest noon shadow falls to the south. Scholars disagree about what the stone was for, and generally reject the popular idea that it was a solar calendar. Seeing the shadowless noon needs you there on the day and the sky to cooperate, in a place that is often in cloud, so treat it as a chance, not a booking.
Tally, in the marginI stood beside it and admired its shadow, and only later learned there are days it has none. I have added those days to the list, and I am aware what that does to the list.
Getting there
How to get there. There are three routes. The usual one is the train from Cusco or Ollantaytambo, run by PeruRail and Inca Rail, to the town below the ruins, Machu Picchu town, also called Aguas Calientes; from there a bus climbs 8.6 kilometres to the entrance, or you can walk. The second is the Inca Trail, which starts at Piscacucho (kilometre 82 of the railway) or Q’oriwayrachina (kilometre 104), runs up to about 42.5 kilometres, and reaches 4,200 metres at Warmi Wañusqa before arriving through the Sun Gate. The third, cheaper and less reliable, is by road to a point near the hydroelectric station, then on foot or by a short train ride to Aguas Calientes.
Altitude. Cusco is at 3,400 metres and Machu Picchu is more than 1,000 metres lower, so if you fly in from the coast it is Cusco’s altitude you will feel first. Give yourself a day there before anything strenuous.
What to book ahead. Entry is limited every day and a new entrance system has been in force since 2018, so buy tickets through the Ministry of Culture’s official channel as soon as you know your dates, particularly for the dry months. Inca Trail permits are separate, limited, and sell out; trekkers go through a licensed operator. Train seats are also limited, so book them alongside the ticket. Prices and release dates change, so check them at the time.
Practical notes. The site is humid and often in cloud (annual rainfall about 2,010 millimetres at the altitude of the citadel, and 80 to 90 per cent humidity), so pack for rain in every month. Do not confuse Machu Picchu with Vilcabamba: the United States advises against travel to the VRAEM area, which includes Vilcabamba, where Bingham searched for the last Inca capital. The advisory says explicitly that Cusco, the Sacred Valley, the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu are not in the affected area. Peru is at Level 2 for crime, civil unrest and the risk of kidnapping; demonstrations sometimes block roads and trains without warning, as in early 2023.
Mark this place
Common questions
What did the Inca call Machu Picchu?
Picchu, or more likely Huayna Picchu, according to a 2021 paper in the journal Ñawpa Pacha by the historian Donato Amado Gonzales and the archaeologist Brian Bauer. They argue that the name “Machu Picchu” became attached to the ruins through Hiram Bingham’s publications from 1911. Their evidence includes a Spanish record of 1588 naming Huayna Picchu as a town people wished to return to, and a 1904 atlas that marks the ruins under that name.
Who discovered Machu Picchu?
Nobody, in the sense the phrase suggests. The Peruvian explorer Agustín Lizárraga reached the ruins in 1902 and signed the central window of the Temple of the Three Windows in charcoal; Quechua farmers were working the terraces when Hiram Bingham arrived on 24 July 1911, guided by Melchor Arteaga. Bingham brought the site to international attention. His 1952 book Lost City of the Incas claimed the find for himself.
When was Machu Picchu built and abandoned?
A 2021 study in Antiquity led by Richard Burger of Yale, which AMS-dated the bones and teeth of 26 people buried in four cemeteries around the site, concluded that Machu Picchu was occupied from about 1420 to 1532. The older estimate, based on the reign of the emperor Pachacuti, put construction at about 1450. It was abandoned in the mid-sixteenth century, around the time of the Spanish conquest, likely through the collapse of Inca rule and disease.
Was Machu Picchu a lost city?
Not on the evidence. Machu Picchu appears to have been a royal estate for Pachacuti and his successors, occupied by about 750 people, mostly permanent retainers, and its surviving structures include roughly 200 buildings on terraces. It was not forgotten locally: Lizárraga signed a window in 1902, and farmers were cultivating terraces in 1911. No contemporary written record confirms its purpose.
Who lived at Machu Picchu?
Mostly retainers, called yanaconas, drawn from many parts of the Inca world, with religious specialists and temporary workers. Genome-wide analyses of the burials show Andean, coastal, Ecuadorian and Amazonian ancestries, and chemical and bone evidence shows that most residents did not grow up at the site. The terraces, about 4.9 hectares, could not feed 750 people, so food was brought in.
Did Yale return the Machu Picchu artifacts?
Yes. Hiram Bingham took thousands of objects from Machu Picchu to Yale in 1912, 1914 and 1915, supposedly for 18 months of study. After a dispute, Yale agreed in November 2010 to return the disputed collection, and the third and final batch was delivered in November 2012. The pieces are displayed at the Machu Picchu Museum in Casa Concha in Cusco.
How do you get to Machu Picchu?
Most visitors take a PeruRail or Inca Rail train from Cusco or Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes, then a bus of 8.6 kilometres or a walk to the entrance. The alternative is the Inca Trail, which starts at kilometre 82 or 104 of the railway and runs up to about 42.5 kilometres to the Sun Gate. Daily entry is limited to 4,500 visitors, up to 5,600 in peak season, so book ahead.
Is Machu Picchu covered by a US travel warning?
Peru is at Level 2, exercise increased caution, in the State Department’s advisory, reissued in May 2025. The Do Not Travel areas are the Colombian border area of Loreto, the VRAEM valley region including Vilcabamba, and some areas of Ayacucho, Cusco, Huancavelica and Junín. The advisory states that Cusco, the Sacred Valley, the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu are not in the affected area.