
Monumento Inca Pachacutec
Bronze figure of an Inca emperor cast in eleven hundred welded pieces atop a stone tower museum.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Monumento Inca Pachacutec in Cusco opens with a surprising number: the bronze giant overlooking this roundabout is not one cast piece but eleven hundred separate sections, welded together by sculptor Fausto Espinoza Farfan's workshop in 1991. You'll hear why the city wanted a monument to Pachacutec, the ninth Inca credited with turning a small highland kingdom into an empire, and how twenty tons of silicon bronze were poured and fitted by hand until the seams disappeared. Below the statue, a stone tower carries a small museum, built from blocks hauled from four different quarries using the same interlocking technique Inca masons used centuries earlier.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Mirador desde el Cristo Blanco
Eight-meter white statue of Christ with outstretched arms, gifted by a grateful refugee community, overlooking the whole valley.
Qorikancha
Inca sun temple whose gold-plated walls were plundered, its foundations now underpinning a colonial church.
Twelve Angled Stone
Twelve-sided green diorite block, millimeter-fitted without mortar into an Inca palace wall now framing a colonial doorway.
Juchuy Coscco
Royal Inca retreat of stone halls and terraces perched high above the Sacred Valley.
Saqsaywaman
Zigzag megalithic fortress walls of house-sized stones, site of a bloody sixteenth-century siege above Cusco.
Plaza de Armas de Ollantaytambo
Cobblestone Inca-era square ringed by colonial buildings, market stalls and craft workshops.