Cusco: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

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Before you walk anywhere, understand the height: Cusco sits at three thousand three hundred and ninety-nine metres, where the air holds about a third less oxygen than at sea level. Do nothing at all on your first day, drink water constantly, and leave the hills for the third day. Then do this route, which is one short loop with a single idea in it: the Spanish demolished everything they could in this city and built on the foundations, and the foundations are what survived. Two hours, almost all of it on three streets.

A short history of Cusco

Cusco was the capital of the Inca Empire and, according to tradition, the "navel of the world". In the mid-15th century the ruler Pachacuti expanded the realm and built temples and walls of dressed stone without mortar in the city. In 1533 Francisco Pizarro and his men entered it, and in 1534 a Spanish city was established here, its churches built directly on Inca foundations. The earthquake of 1650 destroyed a large part of it, as did that of 1950, and in both the ancient walls survived almost undamaged. In 1911 Hiram Bingham set out from here to Machu Picchu, and in 1983 Cusco was declared a World Heritage Site. The city lies at an altitude of about 3,400 metres.

The ten best sights in Cusco

1
Plaza de Armas
This was Haukaypata, the ceremonial heart of the Inca empire, and it was twice this size before the Spanish built over half of it.
2
Catedral del Cusco
Built on the palace of the Inca Wiracocha using stone carted down from Sacsayhuaman. Find the Last Supper with a guinea pig on the table.
3
Qorikancha
The Temple of the Sun, whose walls were sheeted in gold. The Spanish built a monastery on it; earthquakes took the monastery and left the Inca walls standing.
4
Iglesia de la Compania
The Jesuits built it on an Inca palace and made it grander than the cathedral. The bishop complained to the Pope and the ruling arrived after it was finished.
5
Hatun Rumiyoc
The Inca wall of a palace, and the twelve-angled stone is in it. No mortar anywhere, and a blade will not go between the blocks.
6
Barrio de San Blas
The artisan quarter up the hill, with the steepest streets in the city. The pulpit in its small church is carved from a single tree trunk.
7
Iglesia de San Blas
The oldest parish church in Cusco, from 1562, holding a cedar pulpit considered the finest colonial woodcarving in the Americas.
8
Convento de Santo Domingo
The church the Spanish put on top of Qorikancha. Walk through and you see both buildings at once, one inside the other.
9
Convento de Santa Catalina
A closed convent built on the acllahuasi, the house where the chosen women of the Inca state lived. The same function, twice.
10
Basilica de la Merced
Holds a monstrance of twenty-two kilos of gold set with over a thousand pearls and diamonds, which you can see in the sacristy.

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The Walls That Are Still Here

Plaza de Armas · This was Haukaypata, and it was the centre of an empire that ran about four thousand kilometres from southern Colombia to central Chile, with forty thousand kilometres of road, and did it with no wheel, no iron and no writing. The square was roughly twice this size; the Spanish built the block that now divides it from Plaza Regocijo straight across the middle.
Qorikancha · The Temple of the Sun, whose interior walls were sheeted in gold that the Spanish stripped and melted within months. They then built the Santo Domingo monastery on top of it. In the earthquakes of 1650 and again in 1950 the colonial church came down and the Inca walls underneath did not move — which is why the restoration after 1950 left the Inca stonework exposed instead of plastering over it again.
Catedral del Cusco · Built on the palace of the Inca Wiracocha, out of stone carted down from Sacsayhuaman, which the Spanish used as a quarry. Inside, find the Last Supper painted by Marcos Zapata in 1753: the dish on the table is a cuy, a guinea pig, served whole with its feet in the air, and the drink is chicha. That is the Cusco school — European composition, Andean content, and nobody asked permission.
Iglesia de la Compania · The Jesuits built this on the palace of the Inca Huayna Capac and made it larger and finer than the cathedral across the square. The bishop petitioned the Pope to have it cut down to size. The ruling came back in the bishop favour and arrived in Cusco after the building was already finished, so nothing was done.
Hatun Rumiyoc and the twelve-angled stone · This is the wall of the palace of Inca Roca, and one block in it has twelve separate angles cut into it to meet its neighbours. There is no mortar in this wall at all. The method was to shape each stone to its specific neighbours by repeated trial fitting, which is slow and makes a wall that absorbs an earthquake instead of resisting it. The archbishop palace sits on top of it.
Barrio de San Blas · The artisan quarter, up the steepest streets in the city. Its small church is from 1562 and holds a pulpit carved from a single cedar trunk, considered the finest colonial woodcarving in the Americas; the story told locally is that the skull at the top belongs to the carver. The quarter is where Inca stonework runs under almost every house.

Above the City

Four Inca sites sit on the slope above Cusco on one ticket, and they are all within walking distance of each other on a road that climbs to about three thousand seven hundred metres. Do this on your third day, not your first. The honest way is to take a taxi to the top site and walk down, which is two hours of descent instead of three hours of climbing at an altitude you are not adapted to. Half a day.

Tambomachay · Start at the top. This is a water shrine: carved channels and fountains cut into the rock that still run with the same flow five hundred years later, and the spring that feeds them has never been located. Inca engineering treated water as something to be arranged rather than merely carried, and this is the clearest small example of it.
Puka Pukara · Across the road, a small complex of rough stonework that was probably a roadhouse on the route north into the Sacred Valley: a place where travellers and messengers stopped. The name means red fortress, for the colour the stone turns late in the day. Compare the masonry here with Qorikancha and you can see rank in the stone itself: the finest fitting went to the most important buildings.
Qenqo · A single limestone outcrop carved all over with channels, steps, seats and a zigzag groove that gave it its name — qenqo means zigzag in Quechua. Liquid was poured in at the top and ran down the groove, and it would have been chicha or blood. What it was actually for is not known, and the site labels say so rather than guessing.
Sacsayhuaman · Three terraces of zigzag wall built from blocks that reach over a hundred tonnes, fitted so closely that the joints are hairlines. What stands is the base: after the conquest the Spanish spent two centuries carting the upper stonework away to build churches and houses in the city below, and they only left the blocks too heavy to move. In 1536 Manco Inca held this place during a siege of Cusco that lasted ten months.
Cristo Blanco · The eight-metre white Christ above Sacsayhuaman was a gift to Cusco in 1945 from a group of Palestinian Christians who had arrived as refugees and settled in the city. It is a straightforward thank-you from one displaced community to the place that took them in, and almost nobody who photographs it knows that.
Qolqampata · On the way down: Inca terraces and a palace wall, free to walk through and almost always empty. Paullu Inca lived here — a member of the royal family who took the Spanish side in the civil war among the Inca and was rewarded with a title, a coat of arms and this estate. He also built the church of San Cristobal next door. The conquest was not one side against another.

What the Empire Actually Ran On

The gold is the part everyone remembers and it was never the point. This empire fed about ten million people across four thousand kilometres of mountain, desert and jungle without money, without markets and without writing, and it did it with terraces, water channels, freeze-dried food and knotted string. This route is the machinery. It needs a car or a tour for the day and it is the one that will change what you think about the place. A full day in the Sacred Valley.

Moray · Concentric rings of terracing sunk into the ground in bowls, and the temperature between the top ring and the floor differs by several degrees — the lowest ring behaves like land hundreds of metres lower down. It is generally read as an agricultural research station: a place to test which crop variety survives at which altitude, which is exactly what an empire spanning that much vertical distance would need.
Salineras de Maras · Thousands of shallow pans stepped down a hillside, fed from a single spring that comes out of the mountain already salty. The same families have worked assigned pans here since before the Inca, and the allocation is still inherited rather than bought. Salt mattered because salt is how you keep meat, and keeping food was the whole basis of the state.
Ollantaytambo · The only Inca town still inhabited on its original plan: the street grid, the house blocks and the water channels running down the middle of the lanes are all the originals and the channels still carry water. Above the town are six monoliths of pink porphyry, each over fifty tonnes, quarried on the far side of the valley, brought across a river and hauled up — and the temple they were for was never finished, because the conquest arrived.
Pisac · Terraces that run the entire flank of a mountain, built both to grow food and to hold the slope in place. Above them is the largest known Inca cemetery, with graves cut into the cliff face; nearly all of it was emptied by looters in the colonial period and after. The terracing is the real monument: the Inca state created farmland by building it, on mountainsides that had none.
Chinchero · A colonial church standing directly on an Inca palace wall, at three thousand seven hundred and sixty metres. In the weaving yards below, ask to see the root called saqta used to wash wool: rubbed in water it lathers like soap. Then watch the dyes — cochineal insects for red, which Spain exported to Europe for three centuries and guarded as a state secret because nobody there knew it was an insect.
Tipon · Terraces on the other side of Cusco with a water system that is still working: channels, drops and fountains cut in stone that irrigate the same beds five hundred years on, entirely by gravity and with no maintenance budget. Engineers come here specifically to look at it. This, not the gold, is what the empire was.

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Getting to Cusco and getting around

Velasco Astete Airport · Inside the city at three thousand four hundred metres, so flights only land in the morning before the afternoon wind. Expect to feel the altitude on the walk to the taxi.
Terminal Terrestre · Buses to Puno, Arequipa and Lima, and the night bus to Puno is the one worth taking. Two kilometres from the plaza.
Estacion Wanchaq · The station for the Puno train, which crosses a pass at four thousand three hundred metres. One of the great rail journeys and it takes ten hours.
Poroy · The upper station for Machu Picchu trains when they run from here instead of Ollantaytambo. Check which one your ticket says.

Cheap eats in Cusco

Highland food is cold-weather food and it is built on three things the Andes gave the world: the potato, maize and the guinea pig. The altitude changes how you should eat here — big meals sit badly above three thousand metres, so the local pattern is a large lunch and almost nothing at night, and that is good advice to copy. The counter is the second floor of the San Pedro market or a hole-in-the-wall picanteria. Two to six dollars. And the technology to understand before anything else is chuno, which is a potato that keeps for years.

Chuno · Freeze-dried potato, made by leaving it out for the night frost and the day sun; it keeps for years
Cuy · Guinea pig, roasted whole, and it has been farmed in Andean kitchens for thousands of years
Chiriuchu · A cold plate eaten only at Corpus Christi: guinea pig, chicken, cheese, seaweed, fish roe, sausage and maize
Cuarenta y ocho kinds of potato · Peru has over three thousand native varieties and this market carries dozens of them by name
Charqui · Dried alpaca or llama meat, and the English word jerky comes directly from the Quechua for it
Chicha de jora · Fermented maize beer in a half-litre glass; a red plastic bag on a pole means a house is serving
Alpaca · Lean, dark and nothing like lamb; the cheapest good protein in the city and it is not a novelty
Rocoto and huacatay · The thick red chilli and the black mint; huacatay is the taste you cannot place and cannot buy abroad
Coca tea · Free in most hotels, legal, and it genuinely helps with the altitude; the leaf is not the drug
Picanteria lunch counters · Upstairs at San Pedro: soup, a plate and a drink for about three dollars, and no menu in English

Museums in Cusco

There is one thing to go looking for in the museums here and it is not gold, because the gold was melted within a year of the conquest. It is the quipu: a hanging cord with knotted strings that the Inca state used to keep its records, and it is the closest thing this empire had to writing. Several hundred survive, numbers can be read off them reliably, and whether they also recorded language is an open question that nobody has settled. Museo Inka has the largest display.

Museo Inka · The largest display of quipus anywhere, in the Admiral mansion built on an Inca wall
Museo de Arte Precolombino · Four hundred and fifty objects lit as art rather than as evidence; the best-presented museum in the city
The Last Supper with a guinea pig · Painted by Marcos Zapata in 1753; the dish is cuy and the drink is chicha
Museo Historico Regional · In the house of Garcilaso de la Vega, who wrote the empire history from inside the royal family
Museo de Arte Religioso · The archbishop palace, standing on the Inca wall that holds the twelve-angled stone
Centro de Textiles Tradicionales · Weavers from nine communities working in the open, and every piece sold under the weaver name
Convento de San Francisco · A canvas twelve metres wide, one of the largest in South America, and a crypt of arranged bones
Qorikancha · The one place you see both empires in one room, the colonial church standing inside the Inca walls

Nature and day trips near Cusco

Everything here is about vertical distance. Cusco is at three thousand four hundred metres; the Sacred Valley an hour away is five hundred metres lower and noticeably warmer; Machu Picchu is at two thousand four hundred and is cloud forest with orchids and hummingbirds; and Vinicunca is at five thousand two hundred, which is higher than any mountain in Europe. Within a hundred kilometres you cross from glacier to jungle. Plan altitude, not distance, and give yourself two days in the city before anything above four thousand.

Machu Picchu · At two thousand four hundred metres it is cloud forest, not high Andes; expect rain and orchids
Vinicunca · Five thousand two hundred metres, and it was under ice until about fifteen years ago
Laguna Humantay · A glacial lake at four thousand two hundred metres under a peak people still make offerings to
Sacred Valley terraces · Farmland that was manufactured: the Inca built soil onto mountainsides that had none
Moray · Concentric terraced bowls with several degrees of temperature between top and bottom ring
Laguna Piuray · The lake above Chinchero that supplies a large share of Cusco water, as it did for the Inca
Huchuy Qosqo · A royal estate on a shelf above the valley, reachable only on foot; three or four hours up
Km 82 and the Inca Trail · Five hundred permits a day including porters, sold out months ahead, and it is forty-three kilometres

Holy places in Cusco

Nothing was replaced here, it was layered. Churches sit on temple walls, the Corpus Christi procession walks the route the Inca walked with the mummies of dead rulers, and the mountains are still addressed directly: a payment to the earth, a pago a la tierra, is a normal thing to arrange before building a house in this region. Add to that two executions in the main square, two hundred and nine years apart, that bracket the whole colonial period.

Corpus Christi in Cusco · Fifteen saints carried into the plaza; it was placed on top of an Inca procession of royal mummies
Qorikancha · The Temple of the Sun with a monastery on it; the earthquakes took the church and not the walls
Tupac Amaru in the plaza · Two executions here: Tupac Amaru the First in 1572 and Tupac Amaru the Second in 1781
Andahuaylillas · A village church of about 1620 painted floor to ceiling; the Sistine Chapel of the Andes
Iglesia de San Blas · From 1562, with a cedar pulpit carved from one trunk and a skull at the top of it
Raqchi · The temple of Wiracocha, with a surviving adobe wall twelve metres high on an Inca stone base
Checacupe bridges · An Inca-type rope bridge rebuilt beside a colonial stone one and a modern one, all three in view
Pisac cemetery · The largest known Inca cemetery, cut into the cliff above the terraces, and almost entirely looted

Things to do in Cusco with kids

The honest warning first: three thousand four hundred metres is hard on small children and they show it as exhaustion and loss of appetite rather than headache. Plan a short first two days, and if you can, sleep the first night in the Sacred Valley at two thousand eight hundred instead. After that this is a good place for children — animals everywhere, stones they are allowed to climb on, markets full of colour, and a train.

Sacsayhuaman · Enormous blocks, open grass and a natural rock slide children have used for generations
The Machu Picchu train · Glass roof panels, a river gorge the whole way, and no road alongside it at any point
Mercado de San Pedro · Juice counters at the entrance where they blend anything you point at for a dollar
Alpacas at Awana Kancha · On the Pisac road there are places where children feed alpacas and llamas by hand; free to enter
Salineras de Maras · Thousands of white pans on a hillside, and the walls are salt you are allowed to taste
Moray · Giant green rings sunk into the ground that look exactly like something built for a game
Planetario and the Inca sky · The Inca read the dark patches of the Milky Way as animals, not the bright stars as figures
Chinchero wool demonstration · They wash wool with a root that lathers like soap and dye it red with crushed insects

Nightlife in Cusco

Two honest warnings before the fun. Alcohol at three thousand four hundred metres hits harder and the hangover is worse, so the first night is not the night. And the nightlife right on the Plaza de Armas is almost entirely aimed at visitors, with people handing out free-drink cards in the street. The better evening is a picanteria with chicha, a pena with live Andean music, or a bar two streets off the square. Nothing starts before eleven and the city is cold after dark all year.

Chicheria with a red bag outside · A red plastic bag on a pole means a house is serving chicha today; that is the whole sign
Pena with Andean music · Charango, quena and bombo live; the charango was made by shrinking a Spanish guitar
Calle Procuradores · The alley where every door is a restaurant and someone is outside each one with a menu
Tecsecocha · One street back from the plaza, and that one street is the difference in price and in crowd
Pisco sour and the altitude · It is reported everywhere that drink hits harder up here. Treat the first two nights accordingly
Inti Raymi · The winter solstice festival on the twenty-fourth of June, staged at Sacsayhuaman since 1944
Qoyllur Riti · A pilgrimage of tens of thousands to a glacier at four thousand seven hundred metres, late May or June
San Blas at night · The quarter is quieter and better after dark, and the walk back down is all downhill

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Frequently asked questions about Cusco

What is there to see in Cusco?

The top sights in Cusco are Plaza de Armas, Catedral del Cusco and Qorikancha. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Cusco?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Cusco without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Cusco?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Cusco, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The Walls That Are Still Here.

How do you get to Cusco and get around?

The main ways are Velasco Astete Airport, Terminal Terrestre and Estacion Wanchaq. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Cusco, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Cusco that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.

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