Ruins🏛️ City & settlementMiddle Ages & early modern
Machu Picchu
The site shows how Inca builders integrated landscape, agriculture and ritual architecture. Its management requires a balance between tourism, nature conservation and the interests of local communities.
Photo: Draceane · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Facts
- Place
- Near Aguas Calientes, Peru
- Civilisation / patron
- Inca Empire
- Built
- c. 1450
- Status
- Ruins
- UNESCO World Heritage since
- 1983
- New Seven Wonders (2007)
- UNESCO World Heritage
History
Machu Picchu was built on a ridge above the Urubamba and is usually associated with the reign of Pachacuti. Terraces, water channels, residences and finely worked stone sanctuaries follow the steep terrain. The complex’s precise function remains under study, with a royal estate as one important explanation. After colonial disruption it largely fell out of use, but local knowledge of the site persisted before it gained international prominence in 1911.
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Sources: Wikipedia — Machu Picchu