Cusco, Peru

CUSCO, PERU | "El Ombligo del Mundo — The Navel of the World"

Cusco is the most historically layered city in the Americas — a colonial Spanish city built directly on top of the most sophisticated urban civilization in the pre-Columbian world, where the perfectly fitted Inca stone foundations of the Temple of the Sun and the walls of Qorikancha support the baroque churches and convents of the Spanish colonial administration above them in a vertical archaeology of conquest and survival. The Inca called Cusco the navel of the world and built the Tahuantinsuyo empire — the largest empire in the pre-Columbian Americas, stretching from Colombia to Chile — outward from this single high-altitude point at 3,400 meters above sea level in the Andean highlands.

The colors are the deep terracotta of the Andean clay roofing tiles, the warm grey-gold of the Inca stonework that forms the foundations of the colonial buildings, the deep cobalt of the Andean sky at altitude, and the brilliant green of the sacred valley descending to Machu Picchu below. The morning light in the Plaza de Armas, when the altitude sharpens every color and the cathedral facade turns from grey to deep ochre, is the specific visual experience of Cusco.