Plaza de Armas, Cusco
This is the centre, the very heart, of Cusco city. "Cusco" in Quechua, the language of the Incas means "naval of the world". To the Incas and their people, Cusco was the very centre of the world as they knew it. The Incas are gone, stamped out by the Spanish, as is a lot of their vastly superior architectural techniques, but the language of the Incas lives on. Many rural Peruvians speak only Quechua. However, the people of Cusco speak Spanish and Quechua.
Locals told me that during the time of the Incas, the Plaza de Armas, Plaza Ed Regocijo, and Plaza San Francisco used to be one large central plaza, and that the Spanish divided it up into 3 smaller plazas. The Plaza de Armas is still the central point of Cusco city. I took this photo at dawn, as the sky was turning pink before the multitude of tourists, street hawkers, locals, and police showed up.
Golden statue of Pachacuti Inca Yupanqi with Santo Domingo cathedral in the background.
The statue of Pachacuti (meaning "shaker of the Earth" in Quechua) Inca Yupanqui basking in the rays of the early morning sun. Pachacuti was the Incan emperor who expanded Incan territory from around Cusco and the valley of the Urubamba river to Ecuador and Colombia in the north, Bolivia in the south-east, Chile and Argentina in the south in a very short time, putting the Incan empire on the map and making them a force to be reckoned with.
Pachacuti was also a great builder and historians and anthropologists believe that he built Machu Picchu as his royal estate -- a sort of Inca Camp David.
In the background is the cathedral of Santo Domingo that sits atop the ruins of the most important Incan temple, the Qoricancha (or Coricancha). I was very fascinated by the juxtaposition of Incan culture with Spanish culture and how this juxtaposition manifested itself throughout Cusco and Peru.
