Machu Picchu Live
The official government portal for Peru's 15th-century Inca citadel, hidden from the outside world for nearly four centuries. Live 24/7.
The Peruvian government's official Machu Picchu portal
Machupicchu.gob.pe is the official site run by Peru's Ministry of Culture, covering visitor information, ticketing and the citadel's history and conservation — the primary reference point for anyone planning a visit.
Machu Picchu — the city the Spanish never even found
Built between roughly 1450 and 1470 under the Inca emperor Pachacuti, Machu Picchu was likely a royal estate and religious sanctuary rather than a city in the ordinary sense, home to perhaps 750 to 1,000 people at its peak. What makes it extraordinary among Inca sites is what didn't happen to it: unlike almost every other major Inca settlement, Machu Picchu appears nowhere in Spanish colonial chronicles. The conquistadors who dismantled the rest of the empire never found it, and it was abandoned by its own people, likely between 1532 and 1572, and left to the cloud forest.
Its "rediscovery" for the outside world is more complicated than the popular story suggests. When Yale historian Hiram Bingham reached the ruins on 24 July 1911, guided there by local farmers, he found a charcoal inscription reading "A. Lizárraga 1902" carved into the Temple of the Three Windows — proof that Peruvian farmer Agustín Lizárraga had visited nine years earlier, and that local communities had known of the site all along. Bingham nonetheless brought Machu Picchu to global attention through Yale and National Geographic, and the citadel's stonework still leaves visitors as awestruck now as it did him: the granite blocks were cut and fitted without any mortar, so precisely that not even a knife blade slides between them.
What the portal covers
Official Portal
Ministry of Culture · PeruVisitor information, ticketing and official updates for the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu, direct from the Peruvian government.
Visit official site →Sitting directly atop two fault lines, Machu Picchu might seem like an odd place to build. In fact, researchers believe the Inca chose the location deliberately: the same fractured bedrock that could have doomed a lesser structure instead provided natural drainage, while the precisely interlocking, mortar-free stonework allows the buildings to shift slightly during tremors and settle back into place, rather than crack.
Machu Picchu beyond the portal
Temple of the Three Windows: the carved stone bearing Lizárraga's 1902 inscription, since removed for preservation.
Huayna Picchu: the steep peak overlooking the citadel, climbable via a separate, limited-access permit.
Intihuatana: the carved "hitching post of the sun," believed to have held astronomical and ceremonial significance.
An empire-conquering army swept through the Andes for decades and somehow never found this one citadel, while a farmer clearing land for crops stumbled onto it by accident nine years before an Ivy League expedition made headlines: Machu Picchu's survival owes less to secrecy than to a series of people simply not looking in the right place.
When to visit
Dry season, May to September: for the clearest mountain views and lowest chance of rain over the citadel.
Getting there: Machu Picchu sits above the Urubamba River in the Machupicchu District, about 80km northwest of Cusco, accessible by train via Aguas Calientes, Peru.
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