The city was burned and the area swiftly became a remote backwater of Peru. The location of Vilcabamba was forgotten.

The ruins of the city were rediscovered by Hiram Bingham in 1909 in a remote forest site 130km west of Cuzco called Espiritu Pampa, but he failed to realize its significance, preferring to believe that Machu Picchu, which he also rediscovered, was the fabled 'Lost City of the Incas'.

It wasn't until the 1980's, after archeological work by Gene Savoy and Vincent Lee and research by John Hemming, that Espiritu Pampa was generally accepted as the historical Vilcabamba.