Heritage sites, Archaeological discoveries, History of Archaeology

Ciudad Perdida

Location

Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

Country

Colombia

Year of Research

1972

Culture

Ciudad Perdida is the archaeological place of an ancient city in Sierra Nevada, Colombia.

It is to believed to have been established about in 800 A.D. some 650 years before than Machu Picchu.

This place is also called as Buritaca and the Native Americans call it Teyuna.

Ciudad Perdida was founded in 1972, when a group of local treasure looters found a series of stone steps rising up the mountainside and followed them to an abandoned city which they named Green Hell or Wide Set.

When gold figurines and ceramic urns from this city began to appear in the local black market, authorities disclosed the site in 1975.

Ciudad Perdida contains a series of 169 terraces carved into the mountainside, a net of tiled roads and many small circular plazas.

The entrance can only be reached after some 1,200 stone steps through dense jungle.