Showing 1-7 of 7 results
-
Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús
This church is often lit up at night and can be seen from the train as you come in from Machu Picchu after dark. Its foundations are built upon the palace of Huayna Capac, the last Inca to rule an undivided, unconquered empire. Built by the Jesuits in 1571, it was reconstructed after a 1650 earthquake.
-
Iglesia y Convento de Santa Clara
This 16th-century church, part of a strict convent, is difficult to visit but it's worth making the effort to go for morning services, because this is one of the more bizarre churches in Cuzco. Mirrors cover almost the entire interior; apparently, the colonial clergy used them to entice curious indigenous peoples into the church for worship.
-
Iglesia y Monasterio de Santa Catalina
The tranquil Iglesia y Monasterio de Santa Catalina has a musty museum of religious art, with many colonial paintings of the escuela cuzqueña, plus a dramatically friezed baroque side chapel, with the convent's main altar of carved cedar.
-
La Catedral
Started in 1559 and taking almost a hundred years to build, the Catedral squats on the site of Inca Viracocha's palace and was built using blocks pilfered from the nearby Inca site of Saqsaywamán. The cathedral is joined with Iglesia del Triunfo (1536) to its right and Iglesia de Jesús María (1733) to the cathedral's left. El Triunfo, Cuzco's oldest church, also houses a vault containing the remains of the famous Inca historian, Garcilaso de la Vega.
-
Plaza de Armas
In Incan times, the plaza, called Huacaypata or Aucaypata, was the heart of the Incan capital. Today it's the nerve center of the modern city. Two flags usually fly here - the red-and-white Peruvian flag and the rainbow-colored flag of Tahuantinsuyo, representing the four quarters of the Incan empire. Foreigners often mistake the latter for an international gay-pride banner, to which it bears a remarkable resemblance!
-
-
Qorikancha ruins
If you visit only one site in Cuzco, make it the Qorikancha ruins, which form the base of the colonial church and convent of Santo Domingo. Once the richest temple in the Inca empire, all that remains of Qorikancha today is the masterful stonework.
-
Templo y Convento de la Merced
Cuzco's third most-important colonial church, Templo y Convento de la Merced was destroyed in the 1650 earthquake, but was quickly rebuilt. To the left of the church, at the back of a small courtyard, is the entrance to the monastery and museum. Paintings based on the life of San Pedro Nolasco, who founded the Order of La Merced in Barcelona in 1218, hang on the walls of the beautiful colonial cloister.
Showing 1-7 of 7 results
