Plazoleta de las Nazarenas

This guide to the Plazoleta de las Nazarenas in Cusco opens with a Peruvian president cutting a ribbon here in June 2003, declaring the country was showing the world its wealth. It traces the site five centuries back to a possible Inca ceremonial courtyard, through a conquistador's colonial rebuild, a convent, a noble family's estate, a school, and decades as a crumbling ruin, before a bank bought the property in 1981. You'll follow how two decades of restoration turned rubble back into something the city could use again.