Biography of Place

For my biography of place essay, I will be talking about a trip my family took a few years back to Cusco Peru where we visited the ancient city of Machu Picchu. This is a famous archaeological site that belonged to the Inca Empire. It consists of complex palaces, plazas, temples, and homes in which we scholars can conclude that this may have been built as a ceremonial site, a military stronghold, or a retreat for ruling elites.  The ruins are located in a beautiful area high in the eastern slopes of the Andes, covered with tropical forests of the upper Amazon Basin. Landscape engineering skills are in strong evidence at Machu Picchu.  The sites buildings, walls, terraces, reclaim the mountainous terrain and make the city blend naturally into the rock escarpments on which it is situated. I believe the Lopez article of External/Internal landscape will help me relate my feelings when I first visited this place and will incorporate it in my essay.  This place has been themed as the “lost city” where no one, not even experts, can determine what this city was used for since it was abandoned and the Inca had no written language.  I would like to focus on my paper how the “lost city” was once very isolated (not even the Spanish conquerors knew of it for a while), and now is far from isolated due to the fact that it is a must see for any visitor to Peru. This creates a challenge of preservation of the site while making it accessible to visitors which I will further look into.