Cusco

The Cusco valley was settled by the Killke culture from about 900 to 1200, and radiocarbon dating suggests the Killke first built the walled complex of Sacsayhuamán around 1100. Inca tradition credits Manco Cápac with founding the city, whose name comes from qusqu wanka, the "rock of the owl". The Inca made it the capital of a small kingdom and, from the 15th century, of an empire. Legend credits Pachacuti with rebuilding it; many believe it was planned in the shape of a puma, with two rivers channelled around it and roads leading out to the four quarters of the empire.

Atahualpa's generals took the city in 1532 during the Inca civil war, and the Spanish arrived the next year; Pizarro entered on 15 November 1533 and refounded the city in March 1534. The conquerors looted the palaces and temples, built churches and mansions on their walls, and put the Santo Domingo convent on Qorikancha. Manco Inca besieged the city for ten months in 1536 before withdrawing to Vilcabamba. An earthquake in 1650 destroyed almost all the colonial buildings, and much of the city was rebuilt in the following decades. Túpac Amaru II besieged it in 1781 and was executed in the Plaza de Armas, and from 1821 to 1824 Cusco was the last capital of the royalist viceroy.

Cut off from the coast and the new trade routes, the city lost importance after independence. The earthquake of 21 May 1950 damaged more than a third of its buildings. UNESCO listed the city in 1983, the 1993 Constitution named it the Historical Capital of Peru, and tourism became its main business, hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and the protests of 2022–2023.

Cusco sees itself as the guardian of Inca heritage. Quechua is heard in the markets and on the radio, the city anthem, written in 1944, was translated into Quechua in 1991 and is performed in both languages, and the city flag is a rainbow of seven stripes, adopted in 1978 and since 2021 carrying the golden sun emblem, the Sol de Echenique, that also forms its coat of arms.

The colonial city produced the Cusco School, a style of religious painting that mixed European models with Andean detail; its best-known image is the cathedral's Last Supper, with a guinea pig on the table. The Centro Qosqo de Arte Nativo, founded in 1924, is the city's leading folklore institution, and a symphony orchestra was created in 2009.

The calendar mixes Catholic and Andean devotion. On Holy Monday the Señor de los Temblores, the crucifix believed to have protected the city in the earthquake of 1650, is carried in procession; at Corpus Christi the saints of the parishes come to the cathedral; and on 24 June Inti Raymi re-enacts the Inca festival of the sun at Sacsayhuamán, the most important and best-attended celebration of the year. Football follows Cienciano, founded in 1901 and the only Peruvian club to have won an international competition, the 2003 Copa Sudamericana. Politically, the city has long leaned to the left.

About 430,000 people lived in the city at the 2017 census, making it the largest city in the Peruvian Andes; the Cusco district at its centre held about a quarter of them. The rest live in the districts that spread down the valley, Wanchaq, San Sebastián and others.

Tourism is the main economic activity. Cusco received more than 2.7 million visitors in 2019, more than any other region of Peru, and the industry employs guides, cooks, drivers, hotel staff, weavers and porters. Local industry produces beer, soft drinks, coffee and chocolate, and the surrounding valley farms maize, native tubers, barley and quinoa.

The historic centre has become ever more given over to visitors, and the protests and blockades of 2022–2023, which cost the area an estimated 10 million soles a day, showed how much the city depends on visitors arriving. Daily life for most Cusqueños happens away from the plaza, in the markets, schools and offices of the outer districts.

Cusco's cooking is Andean, built on maize and on the potatoes the region has grown for millennia — some 3,000 varieties are cultivated. Cuy, guinea pig, is the festival dish, usually roasted whole as cuy al horno and served in restaurants around the plaza and in dedicated cuyerías. Traditional picanterías serve adobo, pork marinated in chicha and spices; chairo, a hearty soup; rocoto relleno, stuffed hot peppers; kapchi; and lawas, thick creams of maize or chuño, freeze-dried potato. Timpu, a Cusco dish, is served at Carnival.

The city's most distinctive dish is chiriuchu, eaten at Corpus Christi and not usually served in picanterías: a cold platter of guinea pig, boiled chicken, charqui (dried meat), blood sausage and sausage with potatoes, cheese, maize cake, fish roe and lake algae, bringing together Andean and Spanish ingredients.

Chicha de jora, maize beer, is drunk in chicherías, where the bar game sapo is played, and purple-maize chicha morada is the representative drink of Peruvian cuisine. The San Pedro market is the place to see the produce of the valley and eat cheaply, and around the plaza fusion and neo-Andean restaurants cook native ingredients with modern techniques.