Cusco hotels collection

Pachacuti is said to have given Cusco the shape of a crouching puma: Sacsayhuamán would be its head, its zigzag walls the teeth, and the tail would end where two rivers meet, at Pumachupan. The Qorikancha, temple of the Sun, had its walls covered in plates of gold; the Dominicans raised their monastery on top, and it took an earthquake to uncover the Inca walls, fitted without mortar and still intact. Beneath its tiled roofs, San Blas climbs in lanes of workshops. The cathedral, for its part, fills one side of the Plaza de Armas, below the puma's head on its hill.