The legendary 'Lost City of Machu Picchu' is without a doubt the most important tourist attraction in Peru and one of the world's most impressive archaeological sites. Machu Picchu means “Old Peak” named for the mountain rising behind the city.

It sits on a mountain site of extraordinary beauty, in the middle of a tropical mountain forest, The whole archaeological complex covers approximately 5 square kms. It is situated in the high jungle. Its climate is semi-tropical, warm and humid.

Machu Picchu is said to have been inhabited by the Inca in the mid 1400’s. The site was lost and hidden from civilization for over 400 years until it was rediscovered by archeologist Hiram Bingham in The great mountain peak that rises up behind the city is sometimes called “The hitching post of the sun.”

Machu Picchu Temple of the Sun (also named "the watch tower"),

All of the construction in Machu Picchu uses the classic Inca architectural style of polished dry-stone walls of regular shape. The Incas were masters of this technique, called ashlar, in which blocks of stone are cut to fit together tightly without mortar. Many junctions are so perfect that not even a knife fits between the stones.dry-stone walls ashlar mortar

There are more than one hundred flights of stone steps – often completely carved in a single block of granite – and a great number of water fountains, interconnected by channels and water-drainages perforated in the rock, designed for the original irrigation system.

Machu Picchu is a complex of temples, palaces and observatories and was the home of the Inca ruling classes. From here, high priests made observations and calculations enabling them to chart the heavens - a knowledge which gave them both religious authority and temporal power.

No one is certain why the once thriving city of the Incas suddenly became abandoned, and was left uninhabited and hidden in the jungle for the next 400 years.