THE STORY OF CUSCO
The City of Cusco is located at 3,400 meters above sea level, in a fertile valley fed by several rivers in the heart of the
Central Peruvian Andes of South America. Under the rule of Inca Pachacuteq, in the 15th century, the city was redesigned and remodeled after a pre-Inca occupation process of over 3,000 years and became the capital of the Tawantinsuyu Inca Empire, which covered much of the South American Andes between the 15th and 16th centuries AD.
The Imperial city of the Incas was developed as a complex urban center with distinct religious and administrative functions which were perfectly defined, distributed and organized. The religious and government buildings were accompanied by the exclusive abodes for royal families, forming an unprecedented symbolic urban compound, which shows a stone construction technology with exceptional aesthetic
and structural properties, such as the Temple of the Sun or Qoricancha, the Aqllahuasi, the Sunturcancha, the Kusicancha and a series of very finely finished buildings that shape the Inca compound as an indivisible unity of Inca urbanism. The noble city was clearly isolated from the clearly delineated areas for agricultural, artisan and industrial production as well as from the surrounding neighborhoods. The pre-Hispanic patterns and buildings that shaped the Imperial city of the Incas are visible today.
With the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, the urban structure of the Inca imperial city of Cuzco was preserved and temples, monasteries and manor houses were built over the Inca city. They were mostly of baroque style with local adaptations, which created a unique and high-quality mixed configuration representing the initial juxtaposition and fusion of different periods and cultures, as well as the city’s historic continuity.
The city’s remarkable syncretism is evident not only in its physical structure but also in the Viceroyalty’s artistic expression. It became one of the most important centers of religious art creation and production in the continent. It is also important for its population’s customs and traditions, many of which still keep their ancestral origins.
From its complex past, woven with significant events and beautiful legends.
The city has retained a remarkable monumental ensemble, coherence and is today an amazing amalgam of the Inca capital and the colonial city.
Of the first, it preserves impressive vestiges, especially its plan: walls of meticulously cut granite or andesite, rectilinear streets running within the walls, and the ruins of the Sun Temple. Of the colonial city, there remain the freshly whitewashed squat houses, the palace and the marvelous Baroque churches which achieved the impossible fusion of the Plateresco, Mudejar or Churrigueresco styles with that of the Inca tradition.