Cusco City

Built on the foundations of an ancient Incan city destroyed by Pizarro, the Cusco is dotted with beautiful colonial edifices that marry rigorous geometrical Inca lines with the curls and flourishes of Moorish-Spanish baroque art. The Plaza de Armas in Inca times was called “Huacaypata,” a Quechua word meaning a place of meeting or of weeping. With the arrival of the Spanish, the plaza was transformed: they built stone arches and erected the buildings that still surround it to this day like the Cathedral and The Society of Jesus Church.  Cusco Cathedral construction occurred in two phases: first the Chapel of Triumph that was built on what had been the ancient temple of Suntur Wasi (House of God); afterward, the cathedral was erected on the palace of the Inca Wiracocha. The Renaissance style dominates the façade and the interior, which features particularly exquisite carvings in cedar and alder. The choir and the pulpit are both remarkable for their beauty. It houses an important collection of paintings from the Cusco School and silver-embossed objects. A few blocks from the main square is located the Inca site of Qorikancha (Golden Courtyard). It forms the foundations of the colonial church of Santo Domingo, creating an unusual combination of monolithic Inca and arched colonial architecture. In Inca times the temple walls were clad with 700 sheets of solid gold, proving a tempting lure for the conquistadors. The gold sheets and gold and silver statues are gone, melted down and recast by the Spanish, but the impressively hewn curved wall of basalt stonework remains. It was originally built as an observatory and religious temple to the sun, housing the mummified bodies of the Inca rulers.