The Stone Puma

Historical Building

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North of Cusco's Plaza de Armas towards Cuesta San Blas, you will come upon one of the most haunting tokens of a civilization: the foundation for the one-time palace of 14^th century Incan ruler Inca Roca.  Throughout Cusco, the Spanish attempted to establish their hegemony molishing a century's worth of physically impressive architecture that was the hallmark of Incan and pre-Incan civilization.  And they couldn't. The stone blocks were too large, too heavy and, above all, too tightly fit.

The wall on Calle Hatun Rumiyoc is particularly fascinating; locals will approach you and point out that in addition to the mystery of how the Incas were able to so tightly fit irregular blocks of stone, a mystery yet to be solved by archaeologists and architects. The selection of the stones reveals the distinct outline of a puma, an animal considered sacred in their religion. The original city of Cusco itself is also supposed to resemble this animal.  At the wall, the animal is seen in a crouching position.  The smaller stones at the base of the wall serve as an index of Incan ingenuity, in that they functioned as shock absorbers for the wall itself, which accounts for its endurances though all the seismic shifts in the region's geological history.