Plaza de Armas

This guide to the Plaza de Armas in Cusco starts under the colonial arcade that still carries two rival nicknames, and traces the everyday trades that once lined its arches: bakers, tailors, cloth merchants, and a woman remembered for her sweets at Corpus Christi. It follows one ordinary morning when a Spanish official named Benito Suarez Carbajal crossed paths with a Franciscan friar over a simple request for bread, a small dispute local memory never let go of. Stand under the arcade nearest the cathedral to feel where the old marketplace once pressed right up against the stone.