15/08/2026
Machu Picchu, Peru. Some places impress you. Others make you feel something before you even arrive.
For me, Machu Picchu began long before I walked through its ancient stone walls.
I remember the bus climbing higher and higher through the Andes, surrounded by enormous mountains covered in vegetation and clouds. I started filming them, and looking at those videos afterwards, I had the strangest sensation that the mountains were almost vibrating.
Maybe it was the movement of the camera.
Maybe it was simply me.
But they felt alive.
And somehow, that emotion prepared me for what I was about to discover.
Built by the Incas in the 15th century, around 2,430 metres above sea level, Machu Picchu is extraordinary not only because of the precision of its stonework, terraces and sophisticated relationship with water and agriculture, but because of where and how it was built.
Here, architecture does not seem to fight the landscape.
It listens to it.
Walls follow the contours of the mountain. Stones, terraces, water, astronomical observation and sacred spaces become part of a much larger whole.
And walking through it, I kept thinking about the people who created this place.
People who lived in a world where things seemed to have intention and meaning. Where building was not simply about occupying a piece of land, but about understanding it.
They knew how to listen to the mountains.
They observed the sky.
They understood the cycles of nature.
And they searched for balance.
Perhaps that is what moved me most about Machu Picchu.
Not only the genius of what human beings were capable of creating centuries ago, but the relationship behind that creation: human beings, architecture and nature existing together rather than competing with one another.
Standing there, surrounded by those mountains, I wondered how much of that ability to listen we have lost.
Maybe some places are preserved not only so that we can learn about the past…
but so that the past can remind us of something we once knew. 🌿
Have you ever visited a place where you felt something before you could even explain why?
