Cusco Region
Discover Cusco Region
Introduction
Cusco was the capital of the Inca empire, and its Quechua name means the navel of the world, which is how the Inca understood it: the four quarters of their territory radiated from here. The Spanish built their churches directly on top of Inca foundations, so the city today is colonial baroque standing on precisely fitted Inca stonework that has outlasted every earthquake since.
The Sacred Valley runs north-west from the city along the Urubamba river, a thousand metres lower and much warmer, with the terraced site at Pisac, the fortress town of Ollantaytambo still laid out on its original Inca grid, and the salt pans at Maras. At the end of it, reached by train or on foot, is Machu Picchu — an estate built for the emperor Pachacuti around 1450, abandoned within a century and never found by the Spanish.
The classic Inca Trail takes four days and books out months ahead; the Salkantay, Lares and Choquequirao routes are the alternatives, and Choquequirao is a comparable site with a fraction of a per cent of the visitors. Cusco sits at three thousand four hundred metres, so allow two days to acclimatise before walking anywhere. The dry season runs May to September; Inti Raymi, the winter solstice festival, fills the city in late June.
