Peru Guide
Cusco
The Koricancha complex
Opening time: Mon– Sat 8.30am–5pm, Sun 2–5pm
Price: $3
Address: The intersection of Avenida Sol and Calle Santo Domingo
The Koricancha complex, the main Inca temple for worship of major deities, can't be missed. The Convento de Santo Domingo rises imposingly from its impressive walls, which the conquistadors laid lower to make way for their uninspiring seventeenth-century Baroque church. Prior to the Incas, the Wari culture had already dedicated the site with its own sun temple, known as Inticancha (inti meaning "sun" and cancha meaning "enclosure"). This whole complex was encircled on the inside walls by a cornice of gold, hence the temple's name (Koricancha means "golden enclosure").
Still visible today, there's a large, slightly trapezoidal niche on the inside of the curved section of the retaining wall, close to the chamber identified as the Temple of the Sun, where there once stood a huge, gold disc in the shape of the sun, Punchau, which was worshipped by the Incas. Punchau had two companions in the temple: a golden image of Viracocha, on the right; and another, representing Illapa, god of thunder, to the left. Below the temple was an artificial garden in which everything was made of gold or silver and encrusted with precious jewels. Not surprisingly, none of this survived the arrival of the Spanish.
Koricancha's position in the Cusco Valley was carefully planned. Dozens of ceques (power lines) radiate from the temple towards more than 350 sacred huacas, special stones, springs, tombs and ancient quarries.
The Chapel of Santo Domingo (Mon– Sat 8.30am–6.30pm, Sun 2–5pm) can be accessed via the complex reception desk, or by walking past the Temple of the Moon and the Catholic Sacristy to a tiny section of the inner edge of the vast curved wall.
There are only five rooms in the Koricancha Site Museum (Mon– Sun 9am–5pm), or Museo Arqueológico de Qorikancha, but each contains a number of interesting pieces. The first is pre-Inca, mainly stone and ceramic exhibits; the second Inca, with wooden, ceramic and some metallurgic crafts; in the third, archaeological excavations are illustrated and interpreted; the fourth houses a mummy and some bi-chrome ceramics of the Killki era (around 800 AD).