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🏛️ Machu Picchu
A lost Inca city hidden high in the mountains of Peru, with stones fitted together so perfectly you can't slip a card between them.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
📍 Where is it?
📍 Machu Picchu, Peru — see it on the big map →
High in the mountains of Peru, about 2,430 metres above sea level, sits a stone city in the clouds: Machu Picchu. It was built around the year 1450 by the Inca emperor Pachacuti, as a royal retreat. Temples, houses and terraces for growing food were all carved into the mountainside.
The Inca builders were amazing stoneworkers. They cut huge blocks of stone so precisely that they fit together without any cement — so tightly that you cannot slip a credit card between them. That is why the buildings have survived earthquakes for hundreds of years.
After the Inca empire fell, the city was forgotten by the outside world and swallowed by jungle. In 1911, an explorer named Hiram Bingham brought it to the attention of the world. Today, people hike for days along the Inca Trail just to see the sunrise over Machu Picchu.
🤩 Wow fact!
Machu Picchu's stones fit together so tightly you cannot slip a credit card between them — with no cement at all.
🧠 Quiz time!
Who built Machu Picchu, around the year 1450?