Machu Picchu, Peru The sites that comprise Cusco's Sacred City are spectacular in their own right, but nothing quite prepares a visitor for sunrise over the Incan city of Machu Picchu. At 2,430 meters above sea level, in the midst of a tropical mountain forest, the 15th-century settlement was among the few Inca sites that wasn't plundered by Spanish invaders, and remains one of the world's most-photographed sites to this day.