Tuesday, December 17, 2019, Cusco/Inca #1, Peru
We disembarked our ship docked in Lima early this morning and transferred to the airport for our flight to Cusco, deep in the Andes and once the capital of the Inca empire. We checked into our hotel and enjoyed lunch followed by a panoramic drive of the city. We saw important historic sites including the Plaza de Armas, the main square surrounded by colonial arcades, and the imposing cathedral, built with slabs of red granite. We also saw the Santo Domingo church, built upon the foundations of an Inca temple. We continued on to the ruins of Sacsayhuamán Fortress, the largest structure built by the Incas and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We strolled the grounds of this pre-Colombian complex and learned how 20,000 laborers quarried and transported these huge stone blocks, fitting them together without the use of mortar. Later, we returned to our hotel to get some much needed rest at our 11,200 foot elevation.
Cusco, Peru
Cusco, often spelled Cuzco, is a city in southeastern Peru, near the Urubamba Valley of the Andes mountain range. It is the capital of the Cusco Region and of the Cusco Province. In 2017, the city had a population of 428,450. Located on the eastern end of the Knot of Cuzco, its elevation is around 11,200 feet.
The city was the historic capital of the Inca Empire from the 13th until the 16th-century Spanish conquest. In 1983, Cusco was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO with the title "City of Cuzco." It has become a major tourist destination, hosting nearly two million visitors a year. The Constitution of Peru designates it as the Historical Capital of Peru.
Top: Plaza de Armas
Middle left: Qurikancha
Middle right: Sacsayhuamán
Bottom left: Museum
Bottom right: Colonial houses
Bottom: Aerial view of Cusco
We stayed three nights at the Libertador Cusco Hotel. Palacio del Inka, a Luxury Collection Hotel, is built within an historic mansion known as the Casona de los Cuatro Bustos, which, from its privileged position next to Qoricancha Palace in the center of Cusco, has lived over five centuries of this storied city’s history.
Enclose patio with a few vendors.
Hotel foyer.
Coricancha
Coricancha was the most important temple in the Inca Empire.
Originally named Intikancha or Intiwasi, it was dedicated to Inti, and is located at the old Inca capital of Cusco. Mostly destroyed after the 16th century war with the Spanish conquistadors, much of its stonework forms the foundation of the Santo Domingo church and convent.
To construct Coricancha, the Inca utilized ashlar masonry,** which is composed of similarly sized cuboid stones. The use of ashlar masonry made the temple much more difficult to construct, as the Inca did not use any stone with a slight imperfection or break. By choosing this masonry type, the Inca intentionally demonstrated the importance of the building through the extent of the labor necessary to build the structure. Through the arduous labor needed to construct buildings with ashlar masonry, this form of construction came to signify the Inca's imperial power to mobilize local labor forces. The replication throughout Andean South America of Inca architectural techniques such as those employed at Coricancha further illustrates the Inca's control over a vast geographic region.
Pachakutiq Inca Yupanqui rebuilt Cusco and the House of the Sun, enriching it with more oracles and edifices, and adding plates of fine gold. He provided vases of gold and silver for the Mama-cunas, nuns, to use in the veneration services. Finally, he took the bodies of the seven deceased Incas and enriched them with masks, head-dresses, medals, bracelets, scepters of gold, placing them on a golden bench.
The walls were once covered in sheets of gold, and its adjacent courtyard was filled with golden statues. Spanish reports tell of its opulence that was "fabulous beyond belief." When the Spanish required the Inca to raise a ransom in gold for the life of the leader Atahualpa, most of the gold was collected from Coricancha.
The Spanish colonists built the Church of Santo Domingo on the site, demolishing the temple and using its foundations for the cathedral. Construction took most of a century. This is one of numerous sites where the Spanish incorporated Inca stonework into the structure of a colonial building. Major earthquakes severely damaged the church, but the Inca stone walls, built out of huge, tightly interlocking blocks of stone, still stand due to their sophisticated stone masonry. Nearby is an underground archaeological museum that contains mummies, textiles, and sacred idols from the site.
Notice how the front block has a lug in the center that fits into the indent on the right-hand block.
**Ashlar Masonry is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that was worked until squared or the structure built from it. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruvius as opus isodomum, or less frequently trapezoidal. Precisely cut "on all faces adjacent to those of other stones", ashlar is capable of very thin joints between blocks, and the visible face of the stone may be quarry-faced or feature a variety of treatments: tooled, smoothly polished or rendered with another material for decorative effect.
Dry ashlar masonry laid in parallel courses on an Inca wall at Machu Picchu.
One such decorative treatment consists of small grooves achieved by the application of a metal comb. Generally used only on softer stone ashlar, this decoration is known as “mason's drag.”
Ashlar is in contrast to rubble masonry, which employs irregularly shaped stones, sometimes minimally worked or selected for similar size, or both. Ashlar is related but distinct from other stone masonry that is finely dressed but not quadrilateral, such as curvilinear and polygonal masonry.
Ashlar polygonal masonry in Cuzco, Peru.
Ashlar may be coursed, which involves lengthy horizontals layers of stone blocks laid in parallel, and therefore with continuous horizontal joints. Ashlar may also be random, which involves stone blocks laid with deliberately discontinuous courses and therefore discontinuous joints both vertically and horizontally. In either case, it generally uses a joining material such as mortar to bind the blocks together, although dry ashlar construction, metal ties, and other methods of assembly have been used. The dry ashlar of Inca architecture in Cusco and Machu Picchu is particularly fine and famous.
Notice the thickness of the wall.
Inca Astronomy.
Remaining Inca walls still in use today.
The Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús (Church of the Society of Jesus) is a historic Jesuit church in Cusco, the ancient capital of the Inca Empire, in Cusco Region, Peru. It is situated in the Plaza de Armas de Cusco, the city center. It is built on an Inca palace. It is one of the best examples of Spanish Baroque architecture in Peru. The architecture of this building exerted a great influence on the development of many Baroque architecture in the South Andes. Its construction began in 1576, but it was badly damaged in an earthquake in 1650. The rebuilt church was completed in 1668.
Plaza de Armas.
Known as the "Square of the warrior" in the Inca era, this plaza has been the scene of several important events, such as the proclamation by Francisco Pizarro in the conquest of Cuzco. Similarly, the Plaza de Armas was the scene of the death of Túpac Amaru II, considered the indigenous leader of the resistance. The Spanish built stone arcades around the plaza which endure to this day. The main cathedral and the Church of La Compañía both open directly onto the plaza.
The Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Virgin, also known as Cusco Cathedral, is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cusco. The cathedral is located on the Plaza de Armas. The entire building was built between 1560-1654.
Adjacent and joined to the cathedral is the smaller Iglesia del Triunfo, the first Christian church to be built in Cusco. The Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus, also on the Plaza de Armas, was built at a similar time as the cathedral.
The Cathedral, in addition to its official status as a place of worship, has become a major repository of Cusco's colonial art. It also holds many archeological artifacts and relics. The cathedral was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site under the City of Cuzco listing in 1983.
Sacsayhuamán is a citadel on the northern outskirts of the city of Cusco, Peru, the historic capital of the Inca Empire. Sections were first built by the Killke culture about 1100; they had occupied the area since 900. The complex was expanded and added to by the Inca from the 13th century; they built dry stone walls constructed of huge stones. The workers carefully cut the boulders to fit them together tightly without mortar. The site is at an altitude of 12,142 feet. In 1983, Cusco and Sacsayhuamán together were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List for recognition and protection.
Cusco waaay down below.
Diane's birthday cake waiting for her when we arrived at 8 PM in hotel room.
Tomorrow will be our second day of altitude acclamation and touring.
Tomorrow will be our second day of altitude acclamation and touring.
That looks like such a fantastic place to visit; gotta put it on the bucket list! That altitude would bother me though. Have fun!
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