Calle Loreto (Inca Walls)
Loreto, Cusco, Peru
Calle Loreto is the best-preserved Inca street in Cusco — a narrow lane running from the Plaza de Armas southeast toward Qorikancha, flanked on both sides by perfectly fitted Inca stone walls that have been standing since the 15th century.
Chinchero Textile Market & Ruins
Chinchero, Sacred Valley, Cusco Region
Chinchero is a highland village 30 kilometres from Cusco at 3,762 metres that combines Inca ruins, a colonial church, and the most authentic traditional textile market in the Sacred Valley.
Cusco Cathedral
Avenida Arcopata, Cusco, Peru
The Cathedral of Cusco is the most important colonial church in Peru — a massive Renaissance and Baroque structure built between 1559 and 1654 using stones quarried from Sacsayhuamán (the Spanish literally disassembled the Inca fortress to build their cathedral), and filled with over 400 paintings from the Cusco School, the artistic movement that produced the most distinctive religious art in the Americas.
Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús
Avenida Arcopata, Cusco, Peru
The Church of the Company of Jesus is the most elaborately decorated church in Cusco — a Jesuit church built on the foundations of the Inca Palace of Huayna Capac between 1571 and 1668 whose Baroque facade is so extravagant that the bishop of Cusco complained to the Pope that it outshone his own cathedral (the Pope agreed and ordered the Jesuits to tone it down; they didn't).
Inca Trail to Machu Picchu
Inca Trail, Peru
The Inca Trail is the most famous trek in South America — a four-day, 43-kilometre hike along the original Inca road system from the Sacred Valley to Machu Picchu that passes through cloud forest, alpine tundra, Inca ruins, and the Sun Gate (Inti Punku), where the classic first view of Machu Picchu has made hikers weep since Hiram Bingham's porters first cleared the path in 1911.
Machu Picchu (Day Trip)
Machu Picchu, Urubamba Province, Cusco Region
Machu Picchu is the most famous archaeological site in the Americas and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World — a 15th-century Inca citadel built on a mountain ridge 2,430 metres above sea level, abandoned before the Spanish conquest and hidden by cloud forest until the American historian Hiram Bingham brought it to international attention in 1911 (though local Quechua farmers had known about it all along).
Moray & Maras Salt Mines
Espaderos, Cusco, Peru
Moray and Maras are two of the most visually extraordinary Inca sites in the Sacred Valley — Moray is a series of concentric circular terraces carved into a natural depression that functioned as an agricultural laboratory (each terrace level has a slightly different microclimate, allowing the Inca to test crop varieties at different temperatures), and Maras is an ancient salt-mining operation of over 5,000 terraced salt pans cascading down a mountainside, fed by a natural saline spring.
Museo Inka
Calle Prolongación Pera, Cusco, Peru
The Museo Inka is Cusco's most important museum of pre-Columbian art — housed in the colonial Admiral's Palace (a 17th-century mansion with a portal decorated with mythological figures), the museum displays the most comprehensive collection of Inca artifacts in Cusco, including ceramics, textiles, gold and silver objects, mummies, and the quipus (knotted string recording devices) that were the Inca's primary means of record-keeping.
Pikillacta (Pre-Inca Wari Ruins)
Pikillacta, Lucre District, Cusco Region
Pikillacta is the largest pre-Inca archaeological site in the Cusco region — a Wari Empire administrative centre built between 600 and 1000 AD that predates the Inca by several centuries and demonstrates that the Cusco valley was a centre of civilisation long before Manco Cápac founded the Inca dynasty.
Pisac Ruins & Market
Pisac, Sacred Valley, Cusco Region
Pisac is a Sacred Valley town that combines some of the most dramatic Inca ruins in Peru with the most popular traditional market in the Cusco region.
Plaza de Armas
Plaza de Armas, Cusco
The Plaza de Armas is the heart of Cusco and one of the most historically layered public squares in the Americas — the site of the Inca Huacaypata (the great ceremonial plaza of the Inca Empire), rebuilt by the Spanish as the centre of colonial Cusco, and now a UNESCO World Heritage space surrounded by colonial arcades, Baroque churches, and the restaurants and shops that serve the city's modern tourism economy.
Puca Pucara
Carretera Cusco-Pisac, km 7, Cusco
Puca Pucara ('Red Fortress' in Quechua, from the colour its limestone takes at sunset) is a small Inca ruin 7 kilometres northeast of Cusco on the road to Pisac — probably a military post and tambo (relay station) that guarded the approach to Cusco from the north and served as accommodation for travellers and officials moving between the capital and the Sacred Valley.
Q'enqo
Q'enqo, Cusco
Q'enqo is an Inca ceremonial site carved from a massive limestone outcrop on the road between Cusco and Sacsayhuamán — a sacred rock whose surface is covered with carved channels (the name means 'zigzag' in Quechua, referring to the zigzag channel carved into the rock's surface), niches, steps, and the altar-like platforms that suggest it was used for astronomical observations and ritual ceremonies.
Qorikancha (Temple of the Sun)
Plazoleta Intipampa, Cusco
Qorikancha was the most sacred temple in the Inca Empire — the Temple of the Sun, whose walls were reportedly covered in sheets of gold and whose gardens contained golden replicas of corn, llamas, and flowers.
Sacred Valley (Ollantaytambo & Pisac)
Ollantaytambo, Sacred Valley, Cusco Region
The Sacred Valley of the Incas (Valle Sagrado) is the Urubamba River valley northwest of Cusco — a fertile corridor between the highlands and the jungle that was the agricultural heartland of the Inca Empire and now contains the most accessible concentration of Inca ruins outside Machu Picchu.
Sacsayhuamán
Sacsayhuamán, Cusco
Sacsayhuamán is the most impressive Inca fortress in existence — a massive stone complex on the hillside above Cusco whose zigzag walls of precisely fitted megalithic blocks (some weighing over 100 tonnes) have defied explanation since the Spanish arrived and found them already ancient.
Tambomachay & Inca Water Temple
Tambomachay, Cusco
Tambomachay is an Inca ceremonial site of flowing water — a series of stone channels, aqueducts, and cascading fountains carved into the hillside above Cusco that demonstrate the Inca's reverence for water and their mastery of hydraulic engineering.
Tipon (Inca Water Gardens)
Tipon, Quispicanchi Province, Cusco Region
Tipon is the most impressive example of Inca hydraulic engineering in the Cusco region — a system of terraces, channels, fountains, and aqueducts 23 kilometres southeast of Cusco where water is moved, divided, and directed with a precision that modern hydraulic engineers study and admire.
Twelve-Angle Stone (Hatunrumiyoc)
Calle Hatunrumiyoc, Cusco
The Twelve-Angle Stone is the most famous individual stone in Inca architecture — a precisely cut andesite block fitted into a wall on Calle Hatunrumiyoc that has twelve angles and edges, each fitting perfectly against the neighbouring stones without mortar.
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