Sacsayhuaman travel guide

Daily 0700-1730. You can get in earlier if you wish; definitely try to get there before 1200 when the tour groups arrive. US$13.50 or with BTG visitors ticket. Free student guides available, but you should tip them. Lights to illuminate the site at night, which is a 30-min walk from the town centre; walk up Pumacurco from Plaza de las Nazarenas. Taxi US$1.50.
There are some magnificent Inca walls in the ruined ceremonial centre of Sacsayhuaman, on a hill in the northern outskirts. The Inca stonework is hugely impressive. The massive rocks weighing up to 130 tons are fitted together with absolute perfection. Three walls run parallel for over 360 m and there are 21 bastions.
Sacsayhuaman was thought for centuries to be a fortress, but the layout and architecture suggest a great sanctuary and temple to the Sun, rising opposite the place previously believed to be the Incas throne which was probably an altar, carved out of the solid rock. Broad steps lead to the altar from either side. Zigzags in the boulders around the throne are apparently chicha grooves, channels down which maize beer flowed during festivals. Up the hill is an ancient quarry, the Rodadero, now used by children as a rock slide. Near it are many seats cut perfectly into the smooth rock. The hieratic, rather than the military, hypothesis was supported by the discovery in 1982 of the graves of priests, who would have been unlikely to be buried in a fortress. The precise functions of the site, however, will probably continue to be a matter of dispute, as very few clues remain, due to its steady destruction. The site survived the first years of the conquest. Pizarros troops had entered Cuzco unopposed in 1533 and lived safely at Sacsayhuaman, until the rebellion of Manco Inca, in 1536, caught them off guard. The bitter struggle that ensued became the decisive military action of the conquest, for Mancos failure to hold Sacsayhuaman cost him the war, and the empire. The destruction of the hilltop site began after the defeat of Mancos rebellion. The outer walls still stand, but the complex of towers and buildings was razed to the ground. From then until the 1930s, Sacsayhuaman served as a kind of unofficial quarry of pre-cut stone for the inhabitants of Cuzco

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