Machu Picchu was named the "Lost City of the Incas", by Hiram Bingham, the researcher who announced its existence to western civilization on June 24, 1911. Nowadays, Machu Picchu is the most outstanding symbol of Andean culture and one of the world's major tourist attractions.

The aesthetic quality of the pre-Hispanic buildings, the beautiful landscapes surrounding them, and the way in which the former peoples of this area planned and their buildings to merge with nature merited Machu Picchu's inclusion on Unesco's World Heritage List in 1983 as a "Cultural and Natural World Heritage Site".

Its translation into Spanish is "Montaņa Vieja" (The Old Mountain). It has also been called "The Lost City of the Incas" since it had been a mystery, until Hiram Bingham revealed it to the Western world in 1911, despite de fact that Charles Wagner, 30 years before, had registered the ruins on his maps of the region, although never reaching the site itself.

The existence of Machu Picchu was revealed to the scientific world by Hiram Bingham, who reached this place on July 24, 1911, helped by natives who were accustomed to visiting it. Bingham, an American anthropologist at the University of Yale, started the archaeological investigation and carried out an amazing research of the area, publishing a book, the "Lost City of the Incas".