The clouds part and you see a stone city on a mountaintop, terraces descending into the abyss, Huayna Picchu behind. Machu Picchu seems impossible: why build a city at 2,430 meters where eagles fly below the streets? There's no answer, and that's part of the magic.

The Mystery

Machu Picchu was built around 1450 by order of Inca Pachacuti. The city existed for about a hundred years until the Spanish conquest. The conquistadors never found it. Machu Picchu vanished from history for four hundred years.

In 1911, American historian Hiram Bingham found the city, though locals had always known abo...