A closer look
During their violent campaign to colonize South America and melt down every shiny thing they could find, the Spanish conquistadors somehow completely missed the greatest architectural achievement of the Inca Empire. Machu Picchu was built so high in the treacherous Andes mountains that the Spanish never found it, which is precisely why it wasn't destroyed. It sat quietly in the clouds, reclaimed by the jungle, until an American explorer stumbled upon it in 1911 and took all the credit.
