Vilcabamba

Vilcabamba (in Hispanicized spelling) or Willkapampa (Aymara and Quechua), often called the Lost City of the Incas, is a lost city in the Echarate District of La Convención Province in the Cuzco Region of Peru. Vilcabamba, in Quechua, means "sacred plain". The modern name for the Inca ruins of Vilcabamba is Espíritu Pampa (Plain of the Spirits). Vilcabamba was the capital of the Neo-Inca State from 1539 to 1572. The Neo-Inca State was the last refuge of the Inca Empire until it fell to the Spaniards and their indigenous allies in 1572, signaling the end of Inca resistance to Spanish rule. Subsequently, Vilcabamba was abandoned and its location forgotten. In 1911 explorer Hiram Bingham mistakenly identified the abandoned ruin of Machu Picchu as Vilcabamba, but he also visited a ruin called Espiritu Pampa by local Peruvians. In 1964, Gene Savoy identified Espiritu Pampa as the fabled Vilcabamba, a designation widely accepted by archaeologists and historians. Not to be confused with Vilcabamba, Ecuador, Vilcabamba or Espiritu Pampa is located near the Chontabamba River, a tributary of the Urubamba River. The Inca capital has often been referred to as Vilcabamba the Old to distinguish it from the town of Vilcabamba the New, of Spanish origin and 35 kilometres (22 miles) in straight-line distance southeast of Old Vilcabamba. In 2010, items belonging to the Wari culture and radiocarb

Archaeological site data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).