History of Cuzco

Long before the Incas occupied the Cuzco valley various indigenous groups had settled in the region. Most notable of these were the Killki who farmed in the valley around 700-800 AD – they too constructed temples from the hard rocks of the surrounding mountains. The ruins of some of these still remain; others were built on top of and incorporated into the design of Inca Temples after they reigned in the region (ironically much in the same fashion as the Spanish would impose their own religious structures on to Inca foundations).

Despite a rich tapestry of pre-Incan culture in the region, the Inca’s developed another depiction of the founding of Cuzco. According to Inca legend, Manco Capac and his sister Mama Ocllo emerged from Lake Titicaca to travel across the Andes and found the city of Cuzco. They were sent by the Sun god Inti to find a suitable spot where they could sink a golden staff easily into the ground. The first place they found was the site of Cuzco and the early Inca people developed an economy around farming and weaving here, skills that were taught by Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo.

The expansion of the Inca Empire to incorporate other Andean peoples began with the reign of Pachacutek Yupanqui midway through the 1400’s. He swiftly gained political and religious control over the surrounding regions. He conquered other peoples both by force and by benevolent subversion, imposing Quechua as a common language and creating a state religion.

Cuzco was crafted as the center of his empire. As a part of the city’s development the buildings were transformed into grand stone structures with fantastic architecture that have lasted to this day. It became a thriving metropolis that could rival any Mesoamerican or European city of the time; the hub of an expansive empire that, at its largest, would stretch from southern Colombia to northern Argentina and from the Amazon to the Pacific.

Pachatutek masterminded Cuzco to resemble the shape of a Puma. Its head was the ferocious Sacsayhuaman, its heart was the Huacapata ceremonial square (now the plaza de Armas) its hips were Qoricancha (symbolizing the reproductive center of Inca religion) and its tail was at the junction between the two rivers Saphi and Tullumayo that had been redirected to provide water to the city.

This care and precision that was poured into Cuzco’s planning extended beyond animal imageary: at its height colonial Cuzco was an absolute masterpiece of urban planning, with the best architecture in the empire being saved for the sacred capital. Cuzco was divided into 4 quarters, each of which corresponded to one quarter of the Inca Empire: Chinchasuyu to the northwest, Antisuyu to the northeast, Qontisuyu southwest and Collasuyu to the southeast. The streets were lined with smartly constructed houses and temples; they ran straight and thin and with channels to guide rain waters and avert flooding. 

The arrival of the Spanish turned Cuzco to a very different purpose. It became the key to extracting the wealth of the Incas; the immense quantities of gold and silver that the Incas had refined. The Spanish imposed their own leadership on the city in order to gain control of the vast population within the Inca domain, and to extract tribute from the various corners of the Empire. They stripped the city of any precious metal that could be found, destroying and melting down an unquantifiable amount of artwork and religious objects that had been crafted in gold and silver by artisans of the Empire. These were transported to the coast and loaded on to ships to be transported to Spain. Only through imagination can one contemplate how the city would have looked in its prime.

With the introduction of the new Capital city Lima and the shift in Spanish interest to Silver mines in the south (such as Potosi in Bolivia) Cuzco’s importance slowly dwindled, and it became a quiet provincial town of the republic for the following centuries firstly for the Imperial Viceroyalty of the Spanish Empire and subsequently for the Peruvian Republic, which became independent in 1821.  

To recognize this extraordinary cultural history, reflected in the unique architecture, UNESCO declared Cuzco a World heritage site in 1983.