The Inca capital that Spain built a baroque city on top of — tiled roofs and gilded altars resting on walls of mortarless stone, 3,400 metres up in the Andes.
Long before the Spanish arrived, Cusco was Qosqo — the navel of the world — capital of an empire that ran some 4,000 kilometres down the Andes. Pachacuti, the ninth Inca ruler, rebuilt it in the 1400s in cut stone laid without mortar. Francisco Pizarro's men seized it in 1533 and raised churches on the temples; earthquakes in 1650 and 1950 flattened much of what they built, while the Inca walls beneath never moved. Today about 430,000 people (2017) live at 3,399 metres, on streets where both cities are still plainly visible.
The Inca called their capital Qosqo, the navel of the world, and meant it literally. Four highways left the main square, one for each quarter of Tawantinsuyu — "the four parts together" — an empire that at its height stretched some 4,000 kilometres down the Andes, from southern Colombia to central Chile. Everything was measured from here. Pachacuti, the ninth Inca ruler and the man who turned a small hill kingdom into the largest empire the Americas had ever seen, is credited with rebuilding the city in the 1400s; the chroniclers say he laid it out in the shape of a crouching puma, with the fortress of Sacsayhuamán as its head.
It fell fast. Francisco Pizarro's small band of Spaniards rode in on 15 November 1533, and within three years Manco Inca, the puppet ruler they had crowned, escaped and came back with an army. His men held the hills above the city for ten months from May 1536, firing red-hot stones into the thatched roofs. He lost. The Spanish then did something stranger than demolition: they built on top. Churches, mansions and arcades rose straight off Inca foundations, because nothing else in the valley was so solid. That decision was tested twice. Earthquakes in 1650 and 1950 threw colonial walls into the street, and both times the mortarless stone beneath simply settled and stayed. The 1950 quake tore away so much of the church of Santo Domingo that the golden temple of Qorikancha reappeared underneath it. UNESCO listed the whole centre in 1983.
What that leaves is a city of two halves you can read with your hands. Run a palm along a wall on Hatun Rumiyoc and the joints are so tight a knife blade will not enter; look up and a baroque balcony is sitting on top of it. Cusco is high — 3,399 metres, higher than most people have ever slept — so the first day belongs to coca tea and short flat walks, not hills. After that: the market halls of San Pedro at breakfast, canvases of the Cusco School glowing in candle-dark churches, and evenings on the Plaza de Armas, where the lit cathedral and the ring of black mountains behind it make the same picture the Inca saw.
The making of Cusco
Qorikancha
The Inca Temple of the Sun, its walls once sheathed in gold, with a Dominican church built straight down on top of it.
Sacsayhuamán
Zigzag ramparts above the city, built of interlocking blocks up to 8.5 metres tall and set without a drop of mortar.
The Plaza de Armas and its cathedral
Almost a century in the building (1560–1654) on an Inca palace, and hung with Cusco School canvases — including a Last Supper served with roast guinea pig.
The twelve-angled stone
A single block cut with twelve corners so it locks into its neighbours, in the old palace wall on Hatun Rumiyoc.
Inti Raymi
The Inca sun festival — banned by the Spanish in 1572, staged again every 24 June since 1944, and ending in a vast pageant at Sacsayhuamán.
Pachacuti
The ninth Inca ruler: he rebuilt Cusco in cut stone and began the conquests that turned a valley kingdom into an empire.
San Pedro market
The city's covered market since 1925 — juice counters, mounds of potatoes and corn, alpaca knits and stalls of Andean herbs.
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