Machu Picchu’s stonework is the site’s quiet showpiece. In the ceremonial zones — the Temple of the Sun, the Royal Tomb, the walls of the Sacred Plaza — stones are cut precisely enough to hold without mortar, and the joints have survived five centuries of Andean earthquakes.
Peruways’ guides unpack the three masonry tiers across the site. Rough fieldstone for the terraces, coursed ashlar for ordinary buildings, polygonal cyclopean work for the sacred structures — the quality of the stonework tracks the hierarchy of the buildings.
And the engineering beneath: drainage channels under the plazas, 16 water fountains fed in sequence from a mountain spring, and terraces built on layered gravel to drain the winter frost.
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