Machu Picchu is an architectural jewel. The Beauty and Mystery of it's walled ruins, once palaces of the finest Inca stone work, are augmented even more by the lush, almost virginal landscape of the surroundings.Green jungle flora suffuses the abrupt topography. Orchids add a strange brilliance.

The ruins blend harmoniously amid the narrow and uneven topography. One thousand, three hundred feet below, snakes the Urubamba Canyon and its roaring river.

Machu Picchu sits nearly 8,000 feet above sea level, on top of a ridge between two peaks of different size. The smaller peak, called the "Huayna Picchu", is the one most often seen in photographs of the ruins.

With the passing of the centuries, the ruins' original name has been forgotten.The name "Machu Picchu" comes simply from its geography. It literally means "old peak", just as "Huayna Picchu" is "young peak". The more accurate translation relates, however, to the concept of size, with Machu Picchu as the " bigger peak" and Huayna Picchu,the"smaller peak".

With its discovery in 1911, Machu Picchu made its debut as an authentic archeological enigma. Its purpose continues to intrigue, with mysteries that perhaps will never fully be unraveled.


THE DISCOVERY
It was Hiram Bingham who, in charge of a Yale University expedition,discovered Machu Picchu. The date was July 24, 1911. Bingham's goal had been something else: to locate the legendary Vilcabamba. This was the capital of the governing Inca's descendants. They resisted the Spanish invaders and held Vilcabambaas a bulwark between 1536 and 1572.

But on penetrating the Urabamba Canyon, in the desolate site of Mandorbamba,Bingham's expedition learned from a peasant named Melchor Arteaga that the hill Mahcu Picchu, at the top, held important ruins. To reach them meant ascending a steep slope covered with dense vegetation. Even though skeptical- the expedition was familiar with the many myths about "lost cities"-Bingham insisted on being guided to the spot. Once there, a child from one of the two families that lived there, led him to imposing archeological structures covered by tropical vegetation and abandoned centuries ago.