The Inca capital above the clouds — stone temples, highland markets, and a food scene forged from altitude and ceremony
Cusco (3,399 meters above sea level — higher than the top of the Alps) was the capital of Tawantinsuyu, the Inca Empire, from the 13th century until Francisco Pizarro's forces entered the city in 1533. The Spanish did not replace the Inca city so much as build directly on top of it — colonial churches and mansions are constructed on Inca foundation stones fitted without mortar to a precision modern engineering struggles to explain. The 1650 earthquake destroyed most of the Spanish colonial buildings; the Inca foundations survived. The food culture is Andean: potatoes in 3,000+ varieties (the…
Cusco's history as a major settlement predates the Inca by centuries — the Killke culture occupied the region from 900–1200 AD. The Inca foundation myth (the sun god Inti sent Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo from Lake Titicaca to find where a golden rod sank into the ground — it sank at Cusco) dates the Inca presence to c. 1200 AD. At its height under Pachacuti (1438–1471), Tawantinsuyu stretched from southern Colombia to northern Argentina — the largest empire in pre-Columbian America, with 12 million subjects and a road system of 40,000km exceeding the Roman road network. Pizarro's conquest was…