The cities of the [G 11 / Inca] were built to last. Inca architecture is characterized by [V 008 / vast walls] built of massive blocks. Each block was carefully prepared to fit with the next one, making walls which did not need mortar to hold them together - walls that have survived strong earthquakes.
These buildings were not elaborately carved like the temples of Angkor in Cambodia, nor were they particularly intricate or complicated in their design. Their beauty lies in their size and strength. They were monuments of a highly sophisticated expansionist empire built through war and conquest.
PRE-INCA ARCHITECTURE:
The Inca were just one of many tribes inhabiting Peru who came to dominate the Andean region - most of the land of modern Peru, and some of modern Ecuador, Chile and Bolivia. Their architecture was unique and the most advanced in the region. However, ruins remain from earlier times and cultures which are interesting and may have influenced later Inca architecture.
The earliest domestic buildings were probably [L3 301 / those constructed at Culebras], an early settlement built on the west coast about 200 miles north of Lima. These buildings, dating from around 2,000BC, were simple houses built into the hillside and made from [G 03 / adobe] and [G 06 / basalt] blocks. They were surrounded by terraces on which crops were grown.
Another example of pre-Inca architecture is at Sillustani, now part of western Bolivia. This region was inhabited by the Colla people, who were later conquered by the Inca and became the southern quarter of the Inca Empire (Collasuyo). The Colla people were a warlike tribe who spoke the Ayamara language, not the [G 14 / Quechua] of the Inca. They built large funeral towers called [L3 302 / Chullpas]. These towers were simple in comparison to the buildings of the Inca, but they are interesting ruins of a colonized people whose culture disappeared into the Inca Empire. They too could have had some influence on later Inca architecture.
At Trujillo, about 300 miles north of Lima, the Chimu people based their kingdom around the city of Chan Chan, which they built around AD1100. In this city, large enclosures built of adobe walls, 30 feet high and 10 feet thick at the base, surrounded temples, domestic buildings, irrigated areas and cemeteries. This kind of urban planning and high, thick walls would be seen later in Inca cities in a more sophisticated form.
MATERIALS AND METHODS OF ARCHITECTURE:
Most Inca buildings were made of three different kinds of stone. Yucay limestone was used for foundations, terraces and retaining walls in the walls of the vast Sacsayhuaman Fortress. The stone was cut into polygonal blocks. Green diorite porphyry was used for very strong retaining walls, and these stones were also cut into polygonal form. Black andesite stone was used for regular rectangular masonry of uniform size. There were many buildings constructed using this stone in Cuzco. The quarries from which the stone was taken were located about nine and 21 miles from Cuzco.
The size of stone varied. The later Inca builders used massive blocks in their walls, examples of which can be seen in the buildings at Cuzco, Sacsayhuaman, Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu. The stones were moved with teams of men who dragged the blocks on wooden sleds attached to fiber ropes. They were then raised using earth ramps and levers. The stone was carefully cut and shaped to fit the other blocks.
There were two types of masonry. Coursed masonry was used in the walls of palaces and temples. Blocks were cut into rectangular shapes of equal size and fitted together to make a neat wall. Polygonal masonry made a much stronger wall and was used in terraces and retaining walls. Blocks were cut into shapes with many sides and angles, sometimes more than 10, and carefully joined together in a jigsaw pattern. Both types of masonry can be seen in the walls of buildings in Cuzco which survive today. No mortar was used in building the walls, as the blocks were prepared for an exact fit.
THE BUILDERS AND CRAFTSMEN:
Not only did the Inca system of government have complete control over the lives of its citizens, but its power also extended to deciding how the cities should be planned and laid out. Inca cities were planned by state architects and built by state masons and craftsmen. The heavy labor was carried out by the ordinary people drafted to work on particular projects as part of their labor tax or [L3 208 / mita].
Architects first planned the building by making a model in stone or clay. Master masons worked from the model, supervising the cutting and preparing of stones for the building. Hammers and axes made of stone and chisels made of bronze were used.
THE CAPITAL AT CUZCO:
Inca builders knew how to design cities that used space effectively and were pleasant, healthy places for people to live in. The center of the empire was Cuzco and it is here that we can still see some Inca buildings today.
Cuzco was well irrigated with channels of water running along the narrow streets. Large and beautifully decorated public buildings - palaces of dead Inca and temples of the sun - were built around a huge central plaza. These buildings were often painted with bright colors and decorated inside with fine textiles. The city was carefully divided up into quarters consisting of [L3 303 / common houses] and grander homes for the nobility, areas for public buildings and burial areas. The city was surrounded by terraces for growing crops.
Today, many of the buildings in Cuzco are colonial, built by the Spanish after they had taken the [G 11 / Inca] Empire. Inca walls were incorporated into these colonial buildings.
THE CORICANCHA:
[L3 304 / Religion] was central to Inca life. They worshipped the sun, which was represented in person by the emperor. Every important Inca town had a central temple and priests to serve it. Cuzco, being the capital of the Inca Empire, had the greatest of all the temples. The Coricancha Temple - parts of which still stand today - was Cuzco's central temple and the most important of all the Inca temples.
Coricancha means `golden courtyard' in Quechua. It was dedicated to the worship of the sun and the central room in the temple was the hall of the sun, measuring 93 by 47 feet. In Inca times it was filled with golden objects so that it glowed with dazzling light when the rays of the sun struck the gold. It was here that the most important religious rituals in this great empire took place. The Coricancha was also used to store the mummified bodies of Inca emperors. They were brought out into the sunlight from the darkness of the temple each day and offered food and drink, after which it was ritually burned.
Today the Coricancha is only a shadow of its former self. It now forms the base of the colonial Church of Santo Domingo. During the Inca Empire, however, the temple was brimming with golden objects. This was the kind of wealth the Spanish craved for and it surpassed their wildest dreams. Here were riches which not even the wealthiest monarchs of Europe possessed, available to the followers of Pizarro. The walls were covered in 700 sheets of gold, reportedly weighing 4.42 lbs each. Solid gold and silver treasures and ceremonial objects were stored there, including life size replicas of corn used in agricultural rituals and ceremonially planted. A huge replica of the sun also made out of solid gold was one of the most important items kept in the Coricancha.
The [G 08 / Conquistadors] quickly looted most of the Inca temples. Nearly all of the gold was melted down in just a few months and sent to Spain. Today, only the stonework remains. Most of the intricately modelled objects made by craftsmen from gold and silver were lost forever. Since there were no written records of them, we have had to rely on oral history to give us an idea of what they looked like.
In 1536, Juan Pizarro bequeathed the Coricancha Temple to the Dominican order and it was incorporated into a new Catholic church. Today only a few parts of the famous Inca temple of gold remain. A modern roof has been built to protect both the Inca ruins and the colonial architecture.
A strong curved stone wall, once the temple wall, stands about 20 feet high. Inside the wall there is a courtyard with chambers leading off on either side. These are thought to have been dedicated to the moon and the stars, to thunder and the rainbow, and were once covered with gold and silver sheets. An octagonal-shaped basin now stands in this courtyard and in Inca times was covered with about 132 pounds of gold. Three holes are carved in one of the walls through to the street outside. These may have been used for running sacrificial blood out of the temple.
INCA BUILDING SKILLS:
The Coricancha illustrated the excellent building skills of the Inca. Each stone was perfectly fitted with the next. [G 19 / Trapezoidal] blocks were used to construct niches and doorways, and walls were neatly tapered down. Earthquakes shook Cuzco in 1650 and 1950, but while colonial buildings were destroyed, these brilliantly constructed Inca walls remained standing.
Other examples of Inca walls can be found in the alley of Loreto in the center of Cuzco. On the right hand side of this narrow street are the walls that were once part of the Courtyard of the Serpents, which takes its name from the snakes carved on the lintel over a doorway. On the other side of the Loreto alley is part of the [G 02 / Acllahuasi], now part of the Convent of Santa Catalina. The Acllahuasi wall is made of perfectly shaped rectangular blocks carefully fitted together (coursed masonry). In the street of Hatunrumiyoc is the famous [I 002 / 12-angled Stone]. This wall was once part of the Palace of Inca Roca, the sixth Inca emperor. Polygonal stones are fitted together in a zig-zag pattern of angles and lines making a superbly strong wall.
INCA ROADS AND BRIDGES:
The Inca Empire covered thousands of miles and included hundreds of villages and towns. The administrative center was at Cuzco, and although each of the four provinces had a provincial governor, the emperor or `son of the sun,' was the ultimate authority.
The emperor needed to give and receive information quickly. In order to do this, the empire was connected by an intricate and well-maintained system of roads. The Inca had no wheeled transport and relied on teams of runners and llamas for transporting anything around the empire, from messages to army provisions. Because of this, roads were narrow.
The Inca roads amazed the Spanish who saw a communications system spanning the whole empire. Suspension bridges made of fiber ropes crossed gorges. Terraces and steps were used to climb hills and tunnels were sometimes made through hillsides. There were roads along the coast from Tumbez to Arequipa and on into Chile; highland roads from the Ancasmayo River on the border of today's Colombia to Cuzco and Ayavire, around Lake Titicaca and southeast to Tucuman in modern Argentina. There was another road from Tucuman to Mendoza.
Smaller tracks connected these major roads with each village. Coastal roads were wider and sometimes lined by painted walls and irrigated by a stream to provide drinking water and help cool the road. Milestones marked every five miles, and guest houses (tambos) were built along the roads at regular intervals where travellers could rest.
IRRIGATION:
Irrigation was very important in Peru. Irrigation ditches were often many miles long. Sometimes they were carried on stone causeways up to 50 feet high. [G 17 / Sluice] gates made of stone slabs opened the fields to the main channel. In good agricultural land, streams were often straightened and narrowed to increase the area for cultivation.
Irrigation in Cuzco was especially good. Streams with walls built on each side ran through the city, and small streams were paved with stone. Stone-lined conduits led water into some buildings. Stone baths were also built and were supplied with constant running water.
MACHU PICCHU:
Hidden deep in the jungle, high up in the Andes mountains, [M 006 / Machu Picchu] was undiscovered for many centuries. An American explorer, Hiram Bingham, explored the area in 1911 looking for [L3 305 / the lost city of Vilcabamba], the last stronghold of the [G 11 / Inca]. When he arrived at the ruins of Machu Picchu, he believed that he had found Vilcabamba, and it was only after many years of research that the ruins at Espiritu Pampa were identified as Vilcabamba.
[P 001 / V 003 / Machu Picchu] is a mysterious place built amongst the mist-covered mountain tops. Ruins of temples, ceremonial baths, plazas and terraces trace the outline of a city which was probably abandoned long before the Spanish invasion. Because the Inca left no written records, we have very little idea today of what Machu Picchu's function was. From the abundance of temples and sacred ceremonial places, it seems to have been an important religious center. About 100 skeleton remains have been found at the site, most of them female. This led to speculations that Machu Picchu was a city for [L3 211 / the chosen women].
Later historians disputed this theory and said that Machu Picchu was an Inca stronghold with no particular function, and that it was abandoned before Pizarro arrived in Peru. For some reason which is unknown, the Spanish never discovered Machu Picchu. Perhaps the Inca trail leading to the city had already been overgrown by jungle and the city itself had also been hidden by the beginning of the 16th century. The Inca language must have taken some time for the Spanish to learn, and the Inca could therefore have chosen what they wanted their conquerors to know. Despite this, it is still incredible that a city could simply become hidden to the world by the jungle and not discovered for several centuries.
Today, Machu Picchu is a well maintained and very interesting site to visit. Many visitors arrive along the Inca Trail, a 20-mile track leading from the railway line to [M 004 / Cuzco]. The trail goes past several other interesting Inca ruins (SEE TRAVEL: FAST FACTS: Inca Trail). The other entrance is up steps on the south side of Machu Picchu. Agricultural terraces lead to a series of temples and plazas. The ceremonial baths cut into the rock in a series of 16 parts, show the excellent planning and skills of the masons who built them.
The sacred area of Machu Picchu is on the west of the site. The Temple of the Sun is a beautifully built circular building which once contained a golden disc representing the sun. Altars carved out of the rock, used for ritual sacrifices, still remain. The Temple of the Three Windows named after its large [G 19 / trapezoidal] windows, has a wonderful view over the plaza below. It is surrounded by the Principal Temple, the House of the High Priest and the Sacristy.
INCA FORTRESSES:
Once a new area had been captured and its people subdued, the Inca constructed a fortress and built a town around it. The fortress could protect the town and in an emergency the townspeople could use it as a safe refuge. Fortresses therefore had to be extremely strong and able to withstand enemy attacks, which is where Inca building techniques came into their own.
Today, ruins of some of these fortresses remain. Although many of the walls are broken, visitors can still see how strong and large they once were. [L3 306 / The Sacsayhuaman Fortress] was built to defend Cuzco and much of it still stands today. It was built by Topa Inca who ruled between 1471 and 1493. At Pisac, about 20 miles from Cuzco, a large fortress remains above the town and was used to defend the Urubamba Valley. There is also a religious center at this site and tombs in the steep cliff lead up to the fortress. [L3 307 / Ollantaytambo] also has the ruins of a huge fortress which defended the sacred valley from attackers.
