Led by a Peruvian guide in 1911, American explorer Hiram Bingham made his way through the jungle and up the mountain.
Suddenly, high up on the knife's edge of a mountain range, Bingham came upon a lost mountain city. Decayed and overgrown though it was, Bingham was impressed by the incredible stonework. It was, he said, "one of the finest examples of masonry I had ever seen. Clearly it was the work of a master artist."
The Inca city, called Machu Picchu -- though its original name is unknown -- is 8,000 feet above sea level and about 50 miles northwest of Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital. The fortified town had temples, plazas, houses, terraces for farming and aqueducts for water. It was connected with Cuzco by a rugged, mountain road.
Perhaps some of the Incas found refuge in Machu Picchu when the Spanish overthrew the Inca empire in the 16th Century. But while the Spanish had heard rumors of a hidden Inca city, they never found it.
