THE FOLIO SOCIETY

'Those snow-capped peaks in an unknown and unexplored part of Peru fascinated me greatly. They tempted me to go, to see what lay beyond.'

Nothing could have prepared the American explorer and historian Hiram Bingham for what awaited him in the awe-inspiring mountains of the Andes in the summer of 1911. He had come in search of the fabled Inca city of Vitcos, but found instead Machu Picchu, a sacred shrine and fortress city perched on a 9,000ft-high ridge, its ruins peeping out from centuries of undergrowth and forest - temples, terraces, flights of steps, monuments and houses, all hewn out of beautiful white granite. It seemed extraordinary that Machu Picchu should not only have survived the Spanish Conquest, but have remained undiscovered for so long.

Perhaps only a maverick like Bingham could have chanced upon such a wonder, and he determined to make the most of his good fortune, returning the following year to survey and excavate the site. His findings were published, with some astonishing photographs, in the first issue of National Geographic ever to be devoted to a single location. Originally published over 50 years ago, Lost City of the Incas brings together three decades of Bingham's studies and impressions of Machu Picchu and its place within the context of Inca history. The book also includes his memoirs of the other great discoveries of that extraordinary 1911 season. He did indeed reach Vitcos, and also Espíritu Pampa - the 'Plain of Ghosts' - buried in the deepest recesses of the Peruvian rainforest, and long believed to be the last place of refuge in the defeated Inca empire.