Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
from Quechua (Inca) machu "old man" + pikchu "peak."
Wikipedia
Machu Picchu or Machu Pikchu , is a 15th-century Inca citadel situated on a mountain ridge above sea level. It is located in the Cusco Region, Urubamba Province, Machupicchu District in Peru, above the Sacred Valley, which is northwest of Cuzco and through which the Urubamba River flows.
Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often mistakenly referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas" (a title more accurately applied to Vilcabamba), it is the most familiar icon of Inca civilization. The Incas built the estate around 1450 but abandoned it a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Although known locally, it was not known to the Spanish during the colonial period and remained unknown to the outside world until American historian Hiram Bingham brought it to international attention in 1911.
Machu Picchu was built in the classical Inca style, with polished dry-stone walls. Its three primary structures are the Inti Watana, the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows. Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of how they originally appeared. By 1976, thirty percent of Machu Picchu had been restored and restoration continues.
Machu Picchu was declared a Peruvian Historical Sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. In 2007, Machu Picchu was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide Internet poll.
Usage examples of "machu picchu".
Accused of crimes against humanity, Aeneas defends himself with the story of his life -- a lively if unlikely romp involving a paisley dirigible, a free-love colony in the Black Hills of South Dakota, a neo-Inca community at Machu Picchu, and exile to an outpost on Antarctica-to say nothing of the nuclear destruction of a large portion of eastern North America.
In a crevice on the eastern flank of Machu Picchu, where the rays of the first light can sometimes find it, and light its golden fire, now that the wrappings must have rotted and fallen off.
From my study of Machu Picchu and other ruins in the remote highlands of the Andes, I’.
As I crested the ridge I saw the full splendor of the ruins at Machu Picchu: a temple complex of massive, carefully shaped rocks weighing tons sitting atop each other on the mountain.
This was Machu Picchu the macaw, also known (to her annoyance) as “.
This, Nita knew, was Tom and Carl's intractable macaw Machu Picchu, or Peach for short.
Nansen remembered Machu Picchu, Kerak des Chevaliers, the Lion Gate at Mycenae.
Mondschein's driver took him up the mountain roads to see Lake Titicaca, and north from there to Cuzco and its grand old Inca relics, and up beyond that to the splendors of Machu Picchu.