Tambomachay & Inca Water Temple

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. The site, located about 8 kilometres from the city along the road to Pisac, is believed to have been a place of ritual bathing and water worship — water being one of the three sacred elements (along with the sun and the earth) in Inca cosmology.

The water system at Tambomachay is still functioning — natural springs are channelled through stone aqueducts into a series of fountains and baths that cascade down the terraced hillside with a precision that maintains constant flow despite seasonal variations in the water table. The engineering — creating a permanent, regulated water flow using only stone, gravity, and knowledge of the local hydrology — is as impressive as the massive stonework of Sacsayhuamán, though at a more intimate scale.

Tambomachay is the last of the four Inca sites along the road from Cusco to the Sacred Valley (Sacsayhuamán, Q'enqo, Puka Pukara, and Tambomachay), and visiting all four in sequence provides a morning's worth of Inca architecture that covers military (Sacsayhuamán), ceremonial (Q'enqo), administrative (Puka Pukara), and hydraulic (Tambomachay) engineering. The Boleto Turístico (tourist ticket) covers all four sites plus others in the Sacred Valley.