The urban sector of Machu Picchu is divided into two large sections; the upper, or hanan, to the west, which contains the royal mausoleum, the royal palace, the main temple and the Intiwatana, among other things, and the lower, or urin, to the east, which contains the Sacred Rock and its adjacent garden of stones, the palace of the three doors, the eastern mausoleum, the aqllawasi, the Crypt of the Condor, collcas and two groups of buildings which seem to have been of a domestic character. Both sections are built on high pieces of land which project from a central section, the one which fulfills the function of main plaza formed by various plazas distanced from each other. This is actually the only more or less extensive flat space there is in Machu Picchu.

The terrace which corresponds to the main plaza is located between the hill of the Intiwatana on the west, the group of the Sacred Rock with its garden of stones on the north and the houses of the north and the palace of the three portals on the east. Below and in front of the group of the Sacred Rock, an extension of the main plaza forms a series of wide terraces which configure a landscape resembling an amphitheater that comes to an end at the bottom in a trapezoidal stage. The houses to the north and the palace of the three portals sit on terraces that appear to be stepped gardens over the main plaza.

In the center, the great plaza is decomposing on various wide terraces, which on the west, face the imposing Cyclopean parameters of the sacred plaza, which are stepped almost vertically over them. On the east they face the highest part of urin, which contains the palace that has been called the aqllawasi from the supposition that it would have lodged a group of chosen women whose service to the Inca included fine handcraft labor. In fact, it is a matter of a second plaza, or perhaps a garden or orchard, formed by a flat space with a well-defined rectangular ground plan.

To the south the large plaza also takes in another space differentiated at a lower level and in the form of a trapezoid. It is at the foot of the palace to the west and of a shrine and an urin mausoleum to the east; it is also very elegant and associated with a surrealistic allegory of a condor in the pose of descending upon a cave. Here the plaza ends, which, as we see, crosses the whole north-south axis of Machu Picchu with its various levels of flights of steps. All of it except the south end of the shrine, where the royal mausoleum is located to the west and a group of houses to the east, both separated by rather high terraces. This face without a plaza borders on the north with the main flight of steps, the one which, moreover, is accompanied from the Torreon by a chain of fountains united by canals carved into the rock.