The birthplace of the Incas — on the shores of the world's highest navigable lake, where the Uros people still live on totora-reed floating islands and Andean cosmology runs through everything
Puno is a city of 130,000 on the western shore of Lake Titicaca at 3,812m above sea level — the highest navigable lake in the world, straddling the border between Peru and Bolivia. It is the folklore capital of Peru, with more than 300 traditional dances and the largest annual carnival festival in South America (Fiesta de la Candelaria, February). The lake is the mythological origin point of the Inca civilisation: tradition holds that Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo emerged from Titicaca sent by the Sun god Inti to found Cusco. The Uros, a pre-Aymara people, live on 42 artificial floating islands…
Lake Titicaca was the centre of the Tiwanaku civilisation (300 BCE–1150 CE), one of the most significant pre-Inca cultures of the Andes, which built megalithic temple complexes on the Bolivian shore and whose influence spread across the altiplano. The Inca empire incorporated Titicaca as its sacred origin lake and built temple complexes on the Islands of the Sun and Moon (on the Bolivian side). Spanish colonists founded the town of Puno in 1668 primarily to manage silver transport from the Laykakota mines; its cathedral (1757) and Baroque churches reflect the wealth that silver brought. Puno…