Machu Picchu: History of the Inca Royal Estate in the Andes

Machu Picchu is an Inca site on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba River in Peru, built in the 15th century as a royal estate, most likely for the ruler Pachacuti. With its temples, palaces, terraces and fountains set among steep forested peaks, it is the best-preserved major Inca settlement and one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world. Abandoned around the time of the Spanish conquest, it came to international attention in 1911 and is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Background: the rise of the Inca

In the early 15th century the Inca were one of several competing groups in the highlands around Cusco. According to Inca tradition, a ruler named Inca Yupanqui saved Cusco from an attack by the Chanka people and took the title Pachacuti, meaning roughly “he who turns the world”. Under him and his successors the Inca built the largest empire in the pre-Columbian Americas, called Tawantinsuyu.

The traditional date for Pachacuti’s accession is 1438, derived by modern historians from Spanish chronicles. However, radiocarbon dating of human remains from Machu Picchu, published by Richard Burger and colleagues in 2021, showed that the site was in use from about 1420. This suggests that Inca expansion began somewhat earlier than the chronicle-based dates, and that the chronology of the early empire should be treated with caution.

Why Pachacuti built it

Inca rulers owned private estates, often in warm, fertile valleys below Cusco. These estates produced food and goods for the ruler and, after his death, for his descendants, who looked after his mummy and continued his cult. The historian John Rowe drew attention to a Spanish legal document of 1568 in which local people described land called “Picchu” as having belonged to Pachacuti. Most scholars now accept that Machu Picchu was one of his estates.

The location had several attractions. It lay in the lower Urubamba Valley, an area Pachacuti brought under Inca control as part of a group of royal properties that included Ollantaytambo. The ridge was naturally defensible, had a spring for water, and was surrounded by mountains the Inca held sacred. It also overlooked the route towards the tropical lowlands, a source of coca, feathers and other valued goods.

The site’s original name is uncertain. “Machu Picchu” means roughly “old peak” in Quechua and refers to the mountain to the south. In 2021 the historians Donato Amado Gonzales and Brian Bauer argued, from colonial documents, that the Inca settlement itself may originally have been called Huayna Picchu or simply Picchu.

How the estate worked

Machu Picchu was built on a narrow saddle about 2,430 m above sea level. Before building, Inca engineers prepared the ground with extensive foundations and drainage. Much of the work lies underground, in layers of crushed stone that carry rainwater away and protect the structures in an area of heavy rainfall and earthquakes.

The settlement has around 200 buildings, divided into an agricultural sector of terraces and an urban sector. A dry moat and wall separated the two. The urban sector contained temples, plazas, residential compounds and workshops, with the finest masonry reserved for religious and royal buildings. Ordinary buildings used rougher fieldstone set in clay.

A stone channel brought water from a spring on the slopes of Machu Picchu mountain into the site, where it fed a chain of 16 fountains. The first fountain was placed next to the royal residence, so the ruler had the first and purest water. The water system, studied by the engineer Kenneth Wright, has continued to work for centuries with little maintenance.

The population was small. Estimates usually range from about 750 people at the most, falling to a few hundred in the rainy season when the ruler was absent. Studies of skeletons from the burial caves around the site suggest that many of the servants and workers came from distant parts of the empire. They were probably yanakuna, people permanently attached to royal or noble households, rather than local villagers.

Temples and sacred places

Religion shaped the layout of Machu Picchu. The Temple of the Sun, a curved tower of fine masonry built over a natural rock outcrop, has windows aligned with sunrise around the June solstice. Beneath it lies a cave, sometimes called the Royal Tomb, lined with carefully cut stone, although no royal burial has been found there.

The Intihuatana is a carved stone on a high point of the site. Similar sacred stones elsewhere were often broken by Spanish clergy campaigning against Andean religion, but this one survived because the Spanish never reached Machu Picchu. Its precise purpose is unknown, but it was probably linked to observations of the sun and to the worship of the surrounding mountains. Nearby are the Temple of the Three Windows and the Principal Temple, facing the Sacred Plaza.

Other sacred features include the Sacred Rock, whose outline seems to echo the mountains behind it, and the Temple of the Condor, where natural rock and masonry form what many interpret as the shape of a bird. Paths led out of the site to Huayna Picchu, Machu Picchu mountain and along the Inca roads connecting it with Cusco and the wider Inca road system.

Abandonment

Machu Picchu was occupied for perhaps a century. Radiocarbon dates and artefacts suggest it was abandoned in the mid-16th century, around the time of the Spanish conquest that began in 1532. No Spanish chronicle describes a visit, and there is no sign of fighting or deliberate destruction at the site.

Historians link the abandonment to the collapse of the system that supported it. The estate depended on the Inca state and on Pachacuti’s descendants for workers, food and supplies. Smallpox and other European diseases spread through the Andes from the 1520s, and civil war and conquest followed. Once the royal households lost their power, there was little reason to maintain a remote estate. Some farmers continued to use the terraces in later centuries.

Rediscovery and science

Local people never entirely forgot the site. In the 19th and early 20th centuries several visitors reached it, including the Cusco farmer Agustín Lizárraga, who left an inscription there in 1902. Maps made before 1911 also mark a place called Machu Picchu.

On 24 July 1911 Hiram Bingham, an American lecturer at Yale University, was led up the mountain by the farmer Melchor Arteaga, accompanied by a Peruvian police sergeant. At the top they found families living and farming among the terraces. Bingham returned with Yale expeditions in 1912 and 1914–1915, cleared vegetation, mapped the site and excavated burial caves. The April 1913 issue of National Geographic, devoted to Machu Picchu, made it world famous.

Bingham shipped thousands of artefacts and human remains to Yale for study. Their return became a long dispute with Peru. After an agreement reached in 2010, Yale returned the collection to Peru between 2011 and 2012, and it is now kept in Cusco.

Myths and facts

“A lost city that no one knew about.” Machu Picchu was unknown to the outside world and overgrown, but local farmers knew it and some lived there. “Rediscovery” or “scientific discovery” describes 1911 better than “discovery”.

“The last refuge of the Incas.” Bingham believed Machu Picchu was Vilcabamba, the stronghold where the last independent Inca rulers held out until 1572. Later research, including expeditions led by Gene Savoy in the 1960s, identified Vilcabamba with the site of Espíritu Pampa, far to the west.

“A city of the Virgins of the Sun.” Bingham thought most of the skeletons he found were female and proposed that the site housed chosen women. Later analysis showed a much more balanced mix of men and women, consistent with a community of servants and their families.

“Built in 1450.” This date is a convenient estimate. Radiocarbon dating suggests occupation from about 1420, so the familiar date should be treated as approximate.

Machu Picchu today

UNESCO inscribed the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu on the World Heritage List in 1983, recognising both its cultural value and the cloud forest that surrounds it. In 2007 it was named one of the “New Seven Wonders of the World” in a popular online vote.

Before 2020 the site received more than a million visitors a year. Peru’s Ministry of Culture now limits daily entry, sets timed circuits and controls access to the Inca Trail, in an effort to balance tourism with conservation. Concerns include erosion, crowding and development in the town of Aguas Calientes below the ruins.

Timeline

• c. 1420: Earliest radiocarbon evidence for occupation at Machu Picchu.
• c. 1438: Traditional date of Pachacuti’s accession as Inca ruler.
• c. 1450: Commonly cited date for the building of the estate (approximate).
• 1532: Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire begins.
• Mid-16th century: Machu Picchu is gradually abandoned.
• 1902: Agustín Lizárraga visits the site and leaves an inscription.
• 1911, 24 July: Hiram Bingham reaches Machu Picchu guided by Melchor Arteaga.
• 1913, April: National Geographic publishes a special issue on Machu Picchu.
• 1983: UNESCO lists the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu as a World Heritage Site.
• 2011–2012: Yale returns the Bingham collections to Peru.

Why it matters

Machu Picchu offers a rare, nearly complete picture of an Inca royal estate, untouched by Spanish destruction. Its engineering, temples and setting show how the Inca joined religion, power and landscape, and its modern history raises lasting questions about discovery, ownership of heritage and the impact of mass tourism.