Cusco travel guide

Top 10 sights in Cusco

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Saqsaywaman

   A citadel above Cusco whose zigzag walls are built of limestone blocks up to 125 tonnes, fitted without mortar so closely that a blade will not enter. The Spanish quarried much of it for the city below; Inti Raymi is staged here every 24 June.

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2. 

   2© Håkan Svensson (Xauxa) · CC BY 2.5

   Coricancha

   The temple of the sun and the holiest place in the Inca world, whose walls were sheathed in gold plate and whose courtyard held life-size gold maize. The Spanish stripped it and put the Dominican convent on top; the surviving Inca masonry runs through the cloister.

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3. 

   3© Draceane · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Tambomachay

   An Inca water shrine eight kilometres above Cusco, where a spring is led through cut channels and small falls across terraced rock. The flow has never been interrupted in five centuries, which is the point of it; it is included on the city tourist ticket.

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4. 

   4© Draceane · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Puka Pukara

   A small Inca fort on the road above Cusco, built of rougher stone than the ceremonial sites and probably a way station and guard post rather than a fortress. The name means red fortress, from the colour the rock takes at sunset.

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5. 

   5© Haakon S. Krohn · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Q'inqu

   A carved limestone outcrop northeast of Cusco, among the largest huacas in the region, with channels cut for liquid offerings, a zigzag runnel that gave it its name and a chamber used for mummification. A rock throne faces the rising sun at the solstice.

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6. 

   6© Martin St-Amant (S23678) · CC BY 3.0

   Cusco Cathedral

   The cathedral on the Plaza de Armas, built between 1560 and 1664 on the palace of Inca Wiracocha with stone carted from Sacsayhuamán. It holds four hundred colonial canvases of the Cusco school, including a Last Supper set with guinea pig and chicha.

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7. 

   7© Martin St-Amant (S23678) · CC BY 3.0

   Church of the Society of Jesus

   The Jesuit church on the Plaza de Armas, raised from 1571 on the palace of Inca Huayna Capac and rebuilt after the 1650 earthquake. Its facade so outshone the cathedral that the archbishop appealed to Rome; the pope ruled for the cathedral, by which time this was finished.

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8. 

   8© Stevage · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Huchuy Qosqo

   An Inca estate on a shelf high above the Sacred Valley, reached only on foot from Lamay or Tambomachay, with a long two-storey hall and storehouses. It is attributed to Wiracocha Inca and sees a fraction of the visitors that Pisac does.

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9. 

   9© Papiermond · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Muyuq Marka

   The foundations of a circular tower at Sacsayhuamán, three concentric rings with radial walls, which Garcilaso described as a royal building fed by a buried aqueduct. Only the ground courses survive; the Spanish took the rest for Cusco's churches.

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10. 

    10© W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Plaza de Armas

    The main square of Cusco, and before 1534 the Inca Haukaypata where the roads to the four quarters of the empire met and mummies of dead rulers were brought out for festivals. The Spanish halved it and set the cathedral and the Jesuit church on two sides.

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1. 

   1© PsamatheM · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Pisac Archeological Park

   An Inca complex along a ridge above the town of Pisac, with a sun temple of the finest masonry, watchtowers, and a cliff face honeycombed with looted tombs. Terraces fan down the slope below it, still farmed, and the Tuesday and Sunday market is in the town.

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2. 

   2© No machine-readable author provided. Xauxa assumed (based on copyright claims). · CC BY 2.5

   Convent of Santo Domingo

   A Dominican convent of the seventeenth century built directly on the Coricancha, whose Inca walls were kept as foundations and survived the earthquakes that brought the cloister down twice. Colonial arcades and Inca stonework stand within a few metres of each other.

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3. 

   3© Arabsalam · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Museo Inka

   The archaeology museum of the university, in the colonial mansion of the Admiral on a corner near the plaza, holding Inca and pre-Inca ceramics, textiles, metalwork and a group of mummies. Weavers from Chinchero work in the courtyard.

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4. 

   4© Chalisimo5 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Museo de Arte Precolombino Cusco

   A museum opened in 2003 in a colonial house on Plaza Nazarenas, showing about four hundred pieces chosen from the Larco collection in Lima and lit as sculpture rather than as archaeology. The MAP Café in the courtyard is one of the city's better restaurants.

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5. 

   5

   Amaru Marka Wasi

   The remains of an Inca compound in Cusco, of which only stretches of wall survive, reused as the footings of colonial houses. It is one of the clearest places to see how the Spanish city was built straight onto the Inca one rather than beside it.

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6. 

   6© Tobias Deml · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Machu Qullqa

   Inca storehouses near Sacsayhuamán above Cusco, set on a cool windward slope so that the draught through the walls kept grain and freeze-dried potato for years. Rows of rectangular foundations are what remain of the imperial reserve system.

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7. 

   7© Claudia América Córdova Morales · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Jesus, Mary and Joseph's Church

   A colonial church on Plaza Regocijo in Cusco dedicated to Jesus, Mary and Joseph, with a Renaissance front and painted Andean baroque altars inside. It belongs to a Jesuit school and opening hours are irregular.

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8. 

   8© Codas · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Casa Concha

   A colonial mansion near the Qorikancha, named for the Concha family who owned it in the 18th century. Part of Cusco's Monumental Zone since 1972 and of the UNESCO listing of 1983, it now holds the Machu Picchu museum and the pieces returned from Yale.

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9. 

   9© HAZapata · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Colcampata

   An Inca terrace and palace site on the hill below Sacsayhuamán, held by tradition to be the residence of Manco Capac and later granted to Paullu Inca under the Spanish. A doorway and retaining walls survive, with the whole city laid out below.

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10. 

    10© Draceane · CC BY-SA 4.0

    San Francisco Church

    A Franciscan church and convent on Plaza San Francisco, begun in 1549, with a crypt where the bones of friars are arranged in patterns on the walls. Its library and a canvas of the Franciscan family tree, twelve metres by nine, are shown on the convent tour.

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