Peru - Lonely Planet Publications [182]
Avenida El Sol & Downhill
MUSEO DE ARTE POPULAR
Winning entries in Cuzco’s annual Popular Art competition are displayed in this engaging museum (basement, Av El Sol 103; admission with boleto turístico; 9am-6pm Mon-Sat, 8am-1pm Sun). This is where the artisans and artists of San Blas strut their creative stuff in styles ranging from high art to cheeky cute, offering a fascinating, humorous take on ordinary life amid the pomp and circumstance of a once-grandiose culture. Small-scale ceramic models depict drunken debauchery in the picantería (local restaurant), torture in the dentist’s chair, carnage in the butcher shop, and even a caesarean section.
There’s also a display of photographs, many by renowned local photographer Martín Chambi, of Cuzco from the 1900s to the 1950s, including striking images of the aftermath of the 1950 earthquake in familiar streets.
QORIKANCHA
If you visit only one site in Cuzco, make it these Inca ruins (Plazoleta Santo Domingo; admission S10; 8:30am-5:30pm Mon-Sat, 2-5pm Sun), which form the base of the colonial church and convent of Santo Domingo. Qorikancha was once the richest temple in the Inca empire; all that remains today is the masterful stonework.
In Inca times, Qorikancha (Quechua for ‘Golden Courtyard’) was literally covered with gold. The temple walls were lined with some 700 solid-gold sheets, each weighing about 2kg. There were life-sized gold and silver replicas of corn, which were ceremonially ‘planted’ in agricultural rituals. Also reported were solid-gold treasures such as altars, llamas and babies, as well as a replica of the sun, which was lost. But within months of the arrival of the first conquistadors, this incredible wealth had all been looted and melted down.
Various other religious rites took place in the temple. It is said that the mummified bodies of several previous incas were kept here, brought out into the sunlight each day and offered food and drink, which was then ritually burnt. Qorikancha was also an observatory from which high priests monitored celestial activities. Most of this is left to the imagination of the modern visitor, but the remaining stonework ranks with the finest Inca architecture in Peru. A curved, perfectly fitted 6m-high wall can be seen from both inside and outside the site. This wall has withstood all of the violent earthquakes that leveled most of Cuzco’s colonial buildings.
Once inside the site, the visitor enters a courtyard. The octagonal font in the middle was originally covered with 55kg of solid gold. Inca chambers lie to either side of the courtyard. The largest, to the right, were said to be temples to the moon and the stars, and were covered with sheets of solid silver. The walls are perfectly tapered upward and, with their niches and doorways, are excellent examples of Inca trapezoidal architecture. The fitting of the individual blocks is so precise that, in some places, you can’t tell where one block ends and the next begins.
Opposite these chambers, on the other side of the courtyard, are smaller temples dedicated to thunder and the rainbow. Three holes have been carved through the walls of this section to the street outside, which scholars think were drains, either for sacrificial chicha (fermented corn beer), blood or, more mundanely, rainwater. Alternatively, they may have been speaking tubes connecting the inner temple with the outside. Another feature of this side of the complex is the floor in front of the chambers: it dates from Inca times and is carefully cobbled with pebbles.
The temple was built in the mid-15th century during the reign of the 10th inca (king), Túpac Yupanqui. After the conquest, Francisco Pizarro gave it to his brother Juan, but he was not able to enjoy it for long – Juan died in the battle at Sacsaywamán in 1536. In his will, he bequeathed Qorikancha to the Dominicans, in whose possession it has remained ever since. Today