Meet one of the lost cities of the Incas. Vilcabamba, also known as “the lost city of the Incas”. It is said that the last Incas lived here before being defeated by the Spaniards. In the district of Vilcabamba, in the province of La Convención, there is a city full of mysteries still not revealed and that is known as “the lost city of the Incas”. It is the city of Vilcabamba, a place where time has stopped at an altitude of 2,650 meters above sea level to show the world the last part of the history of the Incas.
The history of the discovery of Vilcabamba begins with the arrival of Hiram Bingham to Cusco in 1911. The American was looking for the “lost city of the Incas” and, in fact, he arrived in Vilcabamba during this journey. It is worth mentioning that, at that time, Vilcabamba was known as Espiritu Pampa. However, Hiram was not very interested and gave more consideration to Machu Picchu. In this first meeting, Bingham proposed that Machu Picchu was the true lost city and left aside Vilcabamba.
Years later, in the 1970s, an American explorer named Gene Savoy arrived in Peru. In his excursion through the jungle, he discovered Vilcabamba again and confirmed that it was Espiritu Pampa, that is to say, that this was the city where the last Incas had taken refuge. It is from this discovery that new archaeological research began to find out more about what really happened in Vilcabamba.
The famous lost city is an area of about 12 hectares where archaeologists have found temples, canals, platforms, buildings and terraces. Vilcabamba was connected to other places through roads.
Some of these constructions are made of granite stone, although there is a big difference with the walls worked in Coricancha or Machu Picchu. Due to the technique used here, some researchers conclude that it is very likely that Vilcabamba was built by a culture prior to the Incas.
Several houses can be found in Vilcabamba, which were built on platforms. This was possibly done in order to protect everyone from the floods that occurred at the time.