Tipon and Pikillaqta

Less than an hour south of Cusco, Peru are the ruins at Tipon and Pikillqta. I was privileged to visit them on my second to last week in Peru in May. According to National Geographic:

The Inca were brilliant engineers who strove to integrate their architecture with its natural surroundings. Tipon, a 500-acre site built around a spring near Cusco, has been called their masterpiece of water management. Because the waterworks were constructed as part of a country estate for Inca nobility, Tipon has beautiful stone structures akin to those at Machu Picchu, built in the imperial Inca style, with trapezoidal doors, and serviced by finely cut stone fountains. The intricate baths and irrigation channels still function five centuries after the Spanish conquest, which provides Tipon with an endless, soothing soundtrack of running water.

Pikillaqta or “The Place of the Flea”, was built by the Huari culture around 800 AD, before the rise of the Incas. Its unique, geometrically designed terraces surround a group of bulky two-story constructions: apparently these were entered by ladders reaching up to doorways set well off the ground in the first story – very unusual in ancient Peru. Many of the walls are built of small cut stones joined with mud mortar, and among the most interesting finds here were several round turquoise statuettes.
For more photos, of both of these majestic and historical sites I visited, click here.