Qorikancha: Inca & Inca-pabale Architecture
The evening of the day we landed in Cusco, Peru, both me and my wife felt sufficiently acclimatized to venture out to explore the city. We walked a few blocks from our hotel, and came up to Qorikancha — an Incan temple dedicated to the Sun, which was later converted to a Spanish church.
While buying the tickets, we found a nice local guide, who, for 30 Sols (about $10), took us on a guided tour of the site. Here he told us about the Inca architecture, and the “incapable” architecture. The Spanish conquistadors built the church on the site of the temple, using it’s foundations as the base of the church. A major earthquake later destroyed the Spanish construction, but the Incan foundation remained intact. This was even though the Inca architecture used no mortar, and used clever interlocked stones to build the entire temple.
We later saw the details of this Inca technique mortar-less interlocking stones, as some of these excavated stones were kept for display. It seemed to me that this was an early prototype for Lego blocks!
All around the courtyard of the church, chambers of the Incan Sun-Temple are still standing, surviving the ravages of time and earthquakes. The remains of a main sacred altar is also well preserved.
The church itself — despite it’s incapable architecture — is also quite a charming place to visit.
We finished our tour of Qorikancha on the terrace of the church, with a great view of the sunset over Cusco city.
We headed back to the hotel with a nice bite-sized portion of Incan and Spanish history of Peru. The people of Cusco are proud of their Inca heritage, and are not shy of flaunting it!
