The Ruins of the Coricancha
While Cuzco was once awash in Inca temples and palaces, these are now mostly gone. One exception are the ruins of the Coricancha. In Inca times, the Coricancha was the city's largest temple and dedicated to the sun god, Inti. The outer walls were heavily decorated with gold plate, while on the interior a garden of ceremonial crops made of precious metals assisted the priests in their renewal ceremonies to make the earth fertile year after year.
When the Spanish captured the Inca Atahualpa in 1532 and held him against a ransom of gold, the walls of this complex provided them with an estimated 1,400 kilograms of the stuff. Later, when they sacked the city directly, they carried of the golden garden. Finally, they built a Dominican monastery on top of the Coricancha, as a symbol of their superiority.
Some of the buildings survived because the Dominicans were few and decided to re-use much of the exquisite existing structure rather than re-build. When the church and cloister collapsed in the 1950 earthquake, the original Inca buildings survived. As the church was being re-build, the architects took care to build around the Coricancha rather than just over it, and today you can tour it. It also contains a few examples of religious art from the colonial period, which often contains subversive messages. In the painting of The Passion in the pictures below, for example, the artist painted Conquistador Francisco Pizarro as a Roman soldier torturing Christ.
We hope you enjoy the pictures!
