Machu Picchu: Everything you need to know about Circuit 3

Here we tell you about Machu Picchu: everything you need to know about circuit 3.

The Inca citadel of Machu Picchu is one of the most visited places in South America. This Andean sanctuary receives around 2 million tourists a year. This number of tourists that this 500-year-old citadel receives year after year has significantly affected its foundations, putting it in a state of vulnerability.

Due to the risk of collapse that exists in some structures of Machu Picchu, the Ministry of Culture of Cusco has implemented new measures for the distribution of tourists from June 2024 in Machu Picchu.

One of the measures implemented is the distribution of Machu Picchu in 3 general circuits:

Circuit 1
Circuit 2
Circuit 3

In this blog we will focus on explaining in detail what circuit 3 is like.

Summary

Information about Machu Picchu: Everything you need to know about Circuit 3

Circuit 3 in Machu Picchu is underrated due to bad marketing done mostly by you tubers and tiktokers who visited the Inca citadel only once in their life. Due to this misinformation made by many people, this circuit is not as valued or in demand by tourists who long to visit the wonder of the world.

However, circuit 3 is the most beautiful of all the circuits in Machu Picchu and here I explain the reasons:

Although it is true that circuit 3 does not enter the Inca citadel from the upper part which gives you the most famous or marketed photo of the wonder of the world; the access that circuit 3 gives you allows you to observe Machu Picchu from the middle part, a view that in itself is already another wonder of the world. Circuit 3 allows you to have a beautiful and privileged view of Machu Picchu from the middle part of the Inca citadel.
Circuit 3 allows you to visit the most beautiful buildings and sacred places of the Inca citadel. Places such as the enclosure of the sun, the royal mausoleum, the royal residence, the artisans’ quarter, the main square, the sacred rock, the industrial sector, the inhabitants’ house and the enclosure of the water mirrors.
This circuit is ideal for families and adults as it has no steep climbs or descents.

The wonder of the world is beautiful from every angle, in the end, as a tour guide in Machu Picchu, as I always say, Machu Picchu is beautiful wherever you look!

Don’t hesitate and visit one of the 7 wonders of the world.

In the heights of Machu Picchu

It is a poem written by Pablo Neruda, Nobel Prize winner for literature. This jewel of Andean literature was inspired by the great lost city of the Incas and part of that inspiration came while Pablo Neruda was observing this Inca citadel from what we know today as circuit 3.

Here we present stanza 6.

Then on the scale of the earth I have climbed
among the atrocious tangle of the lost forests
to you, Machu Picchu.

High city of scalar stones,
finally home of the one who the terrestrial
did not hide in the sleeping garments.
In you, like two parallel lines,
the cradle of lightning and of man
swayed in a wind of thorns.

Mother of stone, foam of the condors.

High reef of the human dawn.

Shovel lost in the first sand.

This was the home, this is the place:
here the wide grains of corn rose
and fell again like red hail.

Here the golden thread came out of the vicuña
to clothe the loves, the tombs, the mothers,
the king, the prayers, the warriors.

Here the feet of man rested at night
next to the feet of the eagle, in the high butcher’s lairs,
and at dawn
they trod with the feet of thunder the rarefied fog,
and touched the earth and the stones
until they recognized them in the night or death.

I look at the clothes and the hands,
the vestige of the water in the sonorous hollow,
the wall smoothed by the touch of a face
that looked with my eyes at the earthly lamps,
that oiled with my hands the vanished
woods: because everything, clothing, skin, vessels,
words, wine, bread,
went away, fell to the earth.

And the air entered with fingers
of orange blossom on all those asleep:
a thousand years of air, months, weeks of air,
of blue wind, of iron mountain range,
that were like gentle hurricanes of steps
polishing the solitary enclosure of the stone.