Description: If you have time to see only one sight in Cuzco, it must be the church of Santo Domingo at Qoricancha. The spacious Catholic church sits upon a curved hillock that rises up above the Avenida Sol. The mound looks landscaped, and it is, for this was once the site of Qoricancha, the Temple of the Sun, the holiest site in the holiest city in the Inca World.
When the conquistadores marched in in the 16th century the walls of the temple were reputedly lined with more than 700 sheets of solid gold weighing more than 2kg each. The gardens were also decorated with life-size statues of men, women, children, flowers and animals like the White Witch's castle in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, except that these were fashioned of gold, not ice. It is said that the temple contained so much gold and silver that it took the Spanish three months to melt it all down.
After looting the temple, they then 'sanctified' it of its pagan heritage by building a church over the top, dedicated to local saint Domingo Guzman. The heart of the complex is a spacious sunny courtyard surrounded by courtyard. This sits over where the Temple of the Sun once stood. Rooms mark the sites of the other temples—of the Moon, Lightning, and Venus and the Stars.
Now there are interesting displays on Incan cosmology, which is especially useful if you are spending more time exploring the sacred sites of the Incas. Interestingly the Incas did not associate the constellations with the gods as the Greeks did, but rather they paid attention to the dark spaces between the stars, which they saw as forming the outlines of foxes and llamas. You also get the chance to see close up their ingenious stonework, and to recognise the trademarks of their cleverly-worked doors.
Leaving you walk out over the bastions of curved Inca stonework that are all that now remain of the Qoricancha and down through the gardens.
The site is open from 8am to 5pm, and costs around $1.80. The boleto touristico does not cover entry here. The tourist ticket does however cover the small underground Museo de Sitio Qoricancha on Avenida Sol. If you have a ticket you might as well have a quick browse around the Museo's unenlightening displays of pottery and weaving—otherwise it is really not worth the extra $2 to visit it!
Set aside two hours to take in the site fully. It is a fascinating insight into the religious world of the ancient Inca and should be compulsory for anyone with the slightest interest in their civilization.
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