The famous Inca city of Machu Picchu, a tourist gem of Peru, celebrated without tourists the 109th anniversary of its discovery by American archaeologist Hiram Bingham.
Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, tourists are not allowed to visit Machu Picchu since March 16. The authorities had hoped to reopen the ancient citadel to the public on its "birthday", July 24, but were forced to abandon it due to an increase in the number of cases of coronavirus infection. The Governor of the Cuzco region, on the territory of which Machu Picchu is located, Jean Paul Benavente, did not escape from it.
Measures to prevent the transmission of the infection to local residents provide that the access of tourists to the site of the ancient Inca settlement will be limited to 675 people per day. Before the pandemic, this figure reached 5,000 visitors in high season.
The borders of Peru, where more than 371,000 cases of coronavirus infection have been registered, including about 18,000 fatal cases, remain closed for more than four months, which is disastrous for the country's tourism industry.
Machu Picchu, whose name in the Inca language – Quechua - means "old mountain", was built during the reign of Emperor Pachacutec (1438-1471). Discovered by Bingham in 1911 and listed as a UNESCO world heritage site since 1983, the city is located one hundred kilometers from Cuzco, the former capital of the Inca Empire in South-Eastern Peru.
The iconic settlement of the Inca Empire, which until the Spanish conquest in the 16th century for a century dominated the West of Latin America, is located on a rocky spur at an altitude of 2400 meters above sea level.