Mystical places in Peru
5 legends · 3 cities
Cities
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Chan Chan
The largest adobe city in the world: twenty square kilometres of mudbrick walls, capital of the Chimú kingdom until the Inca took it around 1470. The walls carry reliefs of sea creatures and waves. In 2018 a burial was found here containing the remains of more than a hundred and forty children and two hundred llamas — the largest known child sacrifice in history, made, judging by the silt layers, during a flood.
Lake Titicaca
The highest navigable lake in the world, on the Peru–Bolivia border, from which Inca tradition has Manco Cápac emerging to found their empire. In 2000 an underwater expedition found a stone terrace and a wall some eight hundred metres long on the bed near the Island of the Sun — pre-Inca Tiwanaku construction, now submerged. Offerings are still recovered from the bottom: gold figurines, incense, llama bones.
Machu Picchu
An Inca city on the saddle between two peaks at eight thousand feet, built around 1450 and abandoned perhaps a century later — probably to smallpox, which arrived ahead of the Spaniards themselves. The conquistadors never reached it and never learned it was there. The stones are fitted without mortar so closely that a knife blade will not go between them, and the Intihuatana, a carved pillar, casts almost no shadow at the solstices.
Sacsayhuamán
An Inca fortress above Cusco, built from multi-tonne blocks fitted together without mortar so tightly that a knife blade will not pass between them. How they were shaped and lifted is still debated.
Nazca Lines
Giant geoglyphs etched into the desert of southern Peru more than 1,500 years ago. The animal figures and geometric patterns are only fully legible from the air — their purpose is still unresolved.