Off Beat World: Visual Tour: Machu Pichu

A journey to legendary city of Machu Pichu, Peru. Here is the most well-known and intriguing places of Peru.

Machu Pichu, one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, is located on Urubamba Valley in Peru. It is at 88 km distance to the nearest city, Cusco. Famous Urubamba river flows though this city. Machu Pichu is located 2350 meters above the sea level and at the zenith of a granite mountain.

Machu Pichu,as being a Peruvian word, means “old peak”. Additonally, it is referred to “The lost city of Incas”. The history of the city dates back to Inca civilization. According to the records, it was built in the middle of the 15th century by Incas.However, it is the known that natural inhabitants abandoned the city and migrated to remote cities in the following 100 years. Even though it is not exact what caused this migration, researchers guess what the reason is weather conditions or economical problems.

Machu Pichu is now an archeological site where many researchers, scientists, archeologists, historians and university students have done excavations. They have found many things related to Inca culture during these excavations. Some of the buldings like temples in excavation area is colossal and made up of very huge stone blocks. It is not yet understood how these stones are carried to Machu Pichu and put one top of the another. This mystery is still unsolved.

The lost city was discovered by Hiram Bingham with the assist of 1200 people. Researches have shown that the city was seperated into three areas, urban,religious and agricultural namely. Whereas religious areas which were located on the hills, agricultural and urban regions were placed on the plains.

To naturalists, it is one of the most enigmatic and scentic places of the world with its gorgeous nature. Colossal temples are like a witness of glorious Inca's splendor.This legendary city has been visited by 2000 people daily.

And finally, as I do everytime, our visual tour starts after this brief introduction.

Intihuatana stone (Hitching post of the sun ) was used for astronomical purposes by Incas. It was used to measure the angle of sun and determine when the solstices and equinoxes happen.

Temple of sun was shaped like a semicircle on a solid granite block .This is the most famous one of ancient Machu Pichu ruins. To chronicles, it was initially designed by precious stones and even gold. The building has two trapezoidal windows.

Temples of three windows are located on the eastern part of religious area. In the construction of this, enormous blocks were used and fitted into proper sections meticulously.