Cusco, Stone by Stone

A Joint in the Wall: Allison Murray: I am Allison Murray and this is Elsewhere. Allison Murray: Morning light slides along a wall and stops at a seam between two stones, a line so tight it reads like a pencil mark. Above it sits someone else's whitewash. Above that, someone else's wooden balcony. This is Cusco, high in the Andes of Peru: once the Inca capital, and still a city built on what it inherited. Its great square fills with crowds. In San Blas, hands shape figures from clay and wood. And every Christmas Eve, a small painted saint goes home in somebody's bag, carrying more than it looks. So when people gather here, whose history can they still see? Come along. Let's go.

Before the Overlay: Allison Murray: That seam reads like a pencil mark. Now widen the frame until the stones become a whole city, laid out in thin highland air like a great crouching animal. What kind of capital had the Incas made before the Spanish arrived, Hugo? Hugo Carr: A capital built to be looked at, darling. In fourteen thirty-eight Pachacuti became Sapa Inca, and he reshaped Cusco as the core of an expanding empire: a stage for ceremony, a home for the elite, a showcase of monumental stone. The plan was a puma. Its head was the great complex of Sacsayhuamán on the hill, its body the ceremonial centre and the noble houses below. And the heart of that body had been a swamp, which the Incas drained to make their ceremonial square, Huacaypata. Allison Murray: A city drawn as a cat. So who lived in the puma, and who carried it? Hugo Carr: Living in it: Inca rulers, priests and administrators. Authority sat with them. Carrying it: the peoples the empire had conquered. They paid their tax in labour, the mita, and on that hill they were conscripted to build. They hauled stone into a capital whose governance gave them no equal standing. Even the hilltop's plan keeps a name in oral tradition, Huallpa Rimachi. Their work outlasted the empire, though. In Cusco, Inca masonry still sits beneath later colonial additions.

Santurantikuy: Allison Murray: Down from empire to something the size of your palm: before dawn every twenty-fourth of December, Cusco's Plaza de Armas fills with stalls of hand-carved saints, Cooper. Cooper Vale: Artisans from San Blas and the provinces beyond, hauling crates through the dark to set up their stalls. This is Santurantikuy, the Christmas Eve fair. Most days it's the city's great open square, with churches looking onto it. By first light, hundreds of stalls ring the whole thing. Allison Murray: Hundreds of stalls selling what, exactly? Cooper Vale: Saints, mostly. Santurantikuy means sale of saints, Quechua and Spanish run together. Carved santos, painted retablos, whole nativity scenes. Cusco families come for the figures on their Christmas altar at home. The visitors drift in around them. Allison Murray: So what's the first figure a family hunts for? Cooper Vale: The baby. Every nativity needs its Niño Manuelito, the Andean Christ Child, and he comes dressed for the mountains, in a tiny poncho or a knitted chullo. A family can take its time choosing among those little faces. Allison Murray: I'd grab the first baby in a knitted hat and run, Beth. Beth Hartley: Please don't. Pick him up and slow down. Is he clay, wood or plaster? Those painted eyes give him character. Some families put their signature in the shape itself. The Mendívil family make figures with these long, swan-like necks. Allison Murray: Swan necks on a saint. Lovely, or strange? Beth Hartley: Both, and that's the joy. Once you've spotted a Mendívil, you start seeing other families' hands. The stalls stop looking interchangeable, and you're shopping for a maker, not a souvenir. Allison Murray: Cooper, does your family have that patience? Cooper Vale: Patience for talking, anyway. Ask the maker who taught them. This carving and painting gets handed down through families, and suddenly a shepherd the length of your hand has a family tree. Beth inspects the eyes; the family hears the story. Allison Murray: So it's slow and talky. When does it tip into actually buying? Beth Hartley: Fast, once you decide. So decide when to come. The fair usually opens a couple of days before Christmas Eve, and those mornings are calmer. Want the big day itself? Come at dawn: first pick and better prices before the square fills. Allison Murray: And by mid-morning it has filled, Cooper. Cooper Vale: Shoulder to shoulder. Prices called across the tables, cash changing hands, a saint wrapped and handed over while the next buyer's already pointing. Somebody's ladling hot ponche. Tens of thousands of people come through on the day, and the whole square moves at one shuffle. Allison Murray: Beth, is there any slowing down in that crush? Beth Hartley: Always. A full nativity scene can do it: llamas in among the shepherds, mountains painted behind the manger. The Andes walked straight into Bethlehem. Then, fine, Cooper, keep pace. Your family's paid. Where does the Niño go? Cooper Vale: Home, held tight through the crowd, onto the family's Christmas altar. And it's an old errand: families once bought little paste figures from artisans on the cathedral steps. One small baby, carried home for Christmas.

Plaza de Armas: Allison Murray: Clear away the Christmas stalls and the haggling, and what's left is a huge, quiet morning in Cusco's Plaza de Armas: coffee drifting out of the arcades, church bells crossing a wide floor of open stone. What exactly is a first-timer standing in, Gideon? Gideon Thorne: An Inca inheritance. The Plaza de Armas sits on part of Huacaypata, the ceremonial square the Inca rulers set at the very heart of their capital. Allison Murray: So how much of the scale survives? Gideon Thorne: The openness. Don't come expecting the original edges; today's edges came later. But the choice to keep an enormous open middle, a place where people gather simply because there's room to, that is still the thing you walk into. Allison Murray: Katie, you're the one who wants it without a diagram. What does ground level actually show you? Katie Galbraith: Uneven cobbles. Arcades they call portales, cool stone under your hand, with wooden balconies stacked above them. Gideon Thorne: Which tells you exactly who moved the edge. The Cathedral and the Compañía occupy former Inca sites. Colonial builders took over the rim of the square, but they kept the middle open. Allison Murray: Then where can I sit and let all that sink in? Katie Galbraith: The square never closes, so there's no rush. There are benches for a pause, or a table at one of those balcony cafes for a coffee above the bustle. Allison Murray: From a balcony it already looks enormous, Gideon. Gideon Thorne: Then double it. The Inca square was about twice this size, with the Saphy river channelled right through it. The great festivals happened here, Inti Raymi among them, and the celebrations of military victories. Allison Murray: Twice, with a river down the middle. Katie, does any of that show? Katie Galbraith: Not the river, and not the original edges. What you don't have to imagine is the sound: bells, conversation round the fountain. And on top of that fountain stands Pachacuti himself, presiding over people waiting for their coffee. Allison Murray: Does all that noise help you read it, Gideon, or drown it out? Gideon Thorne: It helps. The festivals changed, the rulers changed, the buildings on the rim changed. It's still a place to gather, with room to spare. That much of the old square is still working every morning. Katie Galbraith: Which is the bit you can actually read. Not the Inca edge. The space they chose to leave open.

Lunch and a Chullo at Mercado Central de San Pedro: Allison Murray: The square gave you open sky. This gives you an iron roof, the smell of frying oil and oranges, and a cold juice with a little extra in the glass. Welcome to Mercado Central de San Pedro. Beth, why might a glass be fuller than you've paid for? Beth Hartley: That's the yapita, the little extra serving you often get. And around it, the whole covered hall is at work: potatoes heaped by variety, big round loaves, bundles of herbs, and shoppers trading in Quechua and Spanish. Allison Murray: And how would I order it, exactly? Beth Hartley: You point and you say a fruit. Maracuyá, aguaymanto, which is goldenberry, or the especial with maca blended in. A plain juice is about two soles. The blender howls, the glass comes back, and you drink it standing right there. Allison Murray: And lunch? Please tell me it's more pointing. Beth Hartley: All pointing. The comedor counters, where locals eat, put their pots out front: hen broth with noodles, quinoa soup, lomo saltado. Pick a stall with regulars already on the stools, point, and you get the set menú. Soup first, then a main. Allison Murray: Which is exactly when the hats ambush you. Marcus, what's on that wall of wool? Marcus Hale: Chullos. Knitted Andean hats with earflaps and tassels, usually alpaca or sheep wool, often patterned with geometric designs. A mixed garment: Andean and colonial in one object. Beth Hartley: Not while the soup's still hot, Marcus. Nobody reads a hat over a cooling caldo. Marcus Hale: Agreed. Eat. The hats aren't going anywhere, and a full stomach compares stalls patiently. Then a short inspection: one hat, both hands. Allison Murray: So the afternoon splits. Pay for lunch and walk out happy, or stay and go hunting for a hat. Beth Hartley: Either way, bring cash in small notes and coins. The counters and the hat stalls both run on soles, and nobody wants to break a big note for a bowl of soup. Marcus Hale: And lunch-and-out is a complete visit in itself. Juice, soup, a main, the noise of the place, and nothing to carry home but a full stomach. Beth Hartley: Whereas the hat people wander back into all that colour with time to spare, holding up the same chullo at stall after stall. Allison Murray: Fine. How do I tell a good one? Marcus Hale: Pick it up. Genuine alpaca is soft, with a low natural sheen and some weight for its size. Cheaper ones are often acrylic blends, and they feel lighter in the hand. Beth Hartley: And inside? Marcus Hale: Look for a lining and even stitches where the earflap joins. Then ask the seller where it was made, and take the answer as conversation, not a certificate. Allison Murray: A label makes promises. Stitches can't. Beth Hartley: And the hall never pauses for you. Vendors calling, a blender going somewhere in the hall, and you standing there in a chullo with tassels at your chin, bargaining gently down from the first price. Marcus Hale: Buy a second for someone at home and the price sometimes softens a little. Which is that juice glass again: the market's small extra, when it's offered.

Q'enqo: Allison Murray: On the hill just above the city, at noon the loudest thing is wind and visitors run their fingers along a zigzag cut into one great rock. This is Q'enqo, in the Sacsayhuamán Archaeological Park. What are those fingers following, Hugh? Hugh Danner: A channel cut into living limestone. Q'enqo isn't built from blocks. It's a natural outcrop carved where it stands. The groove starts at a small hole near the top, runs down the incline in sharp switchbacks, then forks in two. Somebody decided where that split would go. Allison Murray: Before anyone gets a finger on it, what gets them through the gate? Hugh Danner: The Boleto Turístico del Cusco. Q'enqo has no ticket of its own. The partial Circuit One ticket covers it, or the full one does, and you can buy it at the entrance. Allison Murray: Big rock, long channel. August, I suspect you've gone straight for something smaller. August Mercer: The hole at the top. Everything else here is outsized. The outcrop runs about twenty metres. And then there's this little opening. Against all that stone, it feels made to the scale of a single person. Hugh Danner: And every turn below it is deliberate. But a cut channel records a plan, not what anyone poured. The Inca left no writing about this place. Even the name came later. The Spanish called it Q'enqo, Quechua for zigzag. They named what they could see. August Mercer: Which is the temptation. You see a groove like that and you want the whole ceremony, who poured and what they said. A surgeon learns that a drain tells you which way things ran, never why somebody opened it. Allison Murray: Then give me the most a careful person is allowed to say. Hugh Danner: Likely ceremonial. The usual reading is that liquids, chicha, the fermented corn beer, or water, were poured at the top and steered down, with one branch running toward a chamber underneath. Bone remains found in the channels point to offerings. Likely. Not established. Allison Murray: And that chamber. Can people go down? Hugh Danner: They can. It's cool and dim, and low in places. The walls, the ceiling and an altar table are all hewn from the one rock. One niche is said to have held mummies. The readings run from funeral rites to sacrifices, most likely of llamas. Allison Murray: August, does your little hole look different now? August Mercer: Completely, and it's the same stone. Before, it was a curiosity. Now I see where a vessel might have been tipped, and the liquid finding that first turn. Nothing about the rock has changed except that someone might be standing over it. Allison Murray: A ritual the size of a cup, on a rock the size of a house. Hugh Danner: And the rest of the outcrop keeps to that hand scale. Steps, stairways and niches are cut straight into the limestone, with reliefs of animals: pumas, condors, and serpents, or possibly monkeys. Even the zoo is disputed. August Mercer: Which is where I'd stop filling in. It's easy to crowd those steps with priests and hand them lines. Better to put a palm on the stone, cool and ridged, the cuts still crisp, and let the people who used it stay absent. Allison Murray: Not everyone up here is a tourist, though. Hugh Danner: No. Shamans still come now and then to leave pagos, traditional Andean offerings, among the carvings. So at noon there are visitors' fingers in the zigzag, and every so often there's an offering set down among the carvings.

Inti Raymi: Allison Murray: Q'enqo asked us to lean in close to carved limestone. A single drum sets the pace. This is Inti Raymi, the Festival of the Sun, every June twenty-fourth at Sacsayhuamán. What gives the festival its voice, Walter? Walter Davies: The pututo, a conch shell blown like a trumpet. One long, hoarse note. The festival's climax begins here in the early afternoon. Allison Murray: And where am I when that note sounds? Walter Davies: In a numbered seat, if you've booked one. The grandstands are ticketed and colour-coded, with orange closest to the action. General admission exists, but the sightlines are thin. Allison Murray: Orange it is. What do I see from there? Walter Davies: First, one dancer in a rainbow-coloured costume. Then you realise she's one of seven to eight hundred local performers moving in formation against the Inca walls. They're grouped as the four suyos, the four quarters of the old empire. Allison Murray: So it's the Inca ceremony, carried on unbroken. Walter Davies: Not unbroken. A Spanish viceroy banned the solstice rite as pagan. What you're watching was rebuilt by Cusco scholars working from an old chronicle. It inherits the name and the shape, but imperial ceremony has become theatre, with Quechua spoken and sung throughout. Allison Murray: Then what are the musicians actually doing for those performers? Walter Davies: Holding them together. Drums and flutes accompany the performers, along with pututo horns. The rites include the sacred fire, offerings of coca leaf and of chicha. Allison Murray: Fire, chicha. I'm bracing myself for the llama. Walter Davies: Brace less. The llama sacrifice is symbolic, and no animal is killed. Then comes the sacred bread rite, and the whole spectacle gathers into a single voice. Allison Murray: Everyone's? Walter Davies: The performers', together. It's the Q'ochurikuy, the closing chant to the sun, at the end of the two-to-three-hour performance. Then the field loosens, and people may linger for photographs with performers still in costume.

Sacsayhuamán: Allison Murray: The costumed court and its drums have gone, and what stays is stone. Sacsayhuamán's zigzag walls, grey limestone under a noon sun, and at eye level, one seam where two huge blocks meet. Marcus, what's happening in that seam? Marcus Hale: Almost nothing, and that's the shock. Neither block is square. Each is many-sided, its edges bent to match its neighbour's. The seam is too tight for a sheet of paper, and there's no mortar in it. Allison Murray: Gideon, the wall itself refuses to run straight. Why all the turning? Gideon Thorne: Because it's one enormous design. Three terraces climb the slope, folding back and forth, with up to forty segments in a wall. At midday every face takes the sun differently, so the wall keeps changing as you move along it. Marcus Hale: Lovely from a distance, Gideon. But a drawing doesn't fit stone. Every one of those angles is a join somebody had to solve by hand. Allison Murray: Solved with what? Marcus Hale: Stone hammers, bronze chisels, levers. You set a block against its neighbour, see where it rubs, lift it off, dress it down and try again. Trial and fit, until the seam disappears. Allison Murray: Patience as a building material. Gideon, who was giving the orders? Gideon Thorne: Tradition credits four master builders, working for Pachacuti and the emperors after him, with labourers drafted through the mita. And each angle had a job: defenders could strike attackers from the side. Allison Murray: How much of it does a visitor get? Gideon Thorne: There's no ticket for Sacsayhuamán alone. Circuit One of the Boleto Turístico covers it and three neighbouring ruins for a single day. The full integral ticket takes in many more sites. Allison Murray: Marcus, is this how the builders left it? Marcus Hale: Mostly the lower walls. Spanish builders later carted off the upper courses for colonial Cusco, leaving the biggest blocks, too heavy to move easily. And the masonry leans slightly inward, with rounded corners, to ride out earthquakes. Gideon Thorne: So for all that size, Marcus, what's the scale hiding about how it was made? Marcus Hale: That each block needed its own fit. However long the wall runs, the work comes down to two edges, one seam, and a crew lifting a block off to try once more.

The City Changes Hands: Allison Murray: Stones fitted so tightly that nothing gets between them. Then, one November, Pachacuti's capital opened to strangers, and everything above those joints was up for grabs. Who came in, Hugo? Hugo Carr: Francisco Pizarro's men, in fifteen thirty-three. They marched into the capital built for ceremony and empire, and took control. Then came the decision that changed its heart. Qorikancha, the Golden Enclosure, the holiest temple in the empire and the house of the sun god Inti, was stripped of its gold to pay the ransom of the captured emperor Atahualpa. Much of the gold went into the furnace, and the altars were desecrated. The site was handed to Juan Pizarro. And Juan gave it away, to the Dominican friars. With one gift, the sun's house became the Church's. Allison Murray: And the priests who kept it? Hugo Carr: They lost control of their own sanctuaries. The Inca rulers no longer governed their capital, and the priests lost the sacred places they had kept, here in the centre and on the hillside the Inca called T'oqokachi, with its shrines to Illapa, god of thunder. Manco Inca fought back. His forces besieged Cusco in fifteen thirty-six and went for the sun temple. The city stayed Spanish. But the new masters built on what they took, and the old centre still shows it: smooth, close-fitted Inca courses below, colonial plaster and carved wood above. New owners upstairs, and underneath, the old stone still taking the weight.

A San Blas Textile: Allison Murray: A whole capital changed hands in that story, stone laid over stone. Shrink it to one blue-painted door on a steep cobbled lane in San Blas, the artisan quarter, with a stack of folded alpaca just inside, and that familiar urge to bring home one good, soft thing. What are you hunting for, Alice? Alice Pemberton: A scarf someone will actually wear at home. And San Blas is good hunting. Whitewashed houses on old Inca foundations, lanes steep enough to slow you down, and hand-painted signs for family workshops, with textiles sitting beside ceramics, carvings and jewelry. Allison Murray: So you step inside. What do your hands go for first? Alice Pemberton: Weight. Real alpaca has a natural density. It sits warm and heavy in the palm in a way a synthetic doesn't. Pick up two or three and you feel the difference. Then you run a thumb along the finished edge and hold it against your wrist. Allison Murray: That's brisk. Margaux, I suspect you're still at the first table. Margaux Delacroix: Still at the first table, and very content there. Softness tells you something, but I want the maker to tell me the rest. Which fiber, exactly? Knitted how? How long did it take? Is it a family pattern or something new? A label is only a claim. Allison Murray: Four questions before anyone's mentioned a price. Margaux Delacroix: And they usually answer gladly, Alice. The person behind the counter often made the thing, and in these studios they like being asked how. Alice Pemberton: Lovely, and then you've had a seminar and bought nothing. Whatever you choose still has to survive an ordinary Tuesday: the bus, a coat collar, the washing basket. Not just the photograph by the blue door. Allison Murray: Then give it proper afternoon time. The workshops generally keep daytime hours, Monday to Saturday, and some close for lunch, so daytime is a better bet than the evening. Margaux Delacroix: And the Tuesday test is exactly what my questions are for. Ask how it was knitted and you learn why it drapes the way it does, and whether the stitching will hold where it folds. Those are what you live with. Allison Murray: And Alice, if someone's actually working in there, what does that add? Alice Pemberton: Then the edge you ran your thumb along stops being a detail. You watch hands repeating the same stitch on a piece that isn't finished yet, and the scarf on the table suddenly has hours in it. Not every shop has someone at the bench, mind. Margaux Delacroix: Which is why a quick decision can be a perfectly sound one. You've asked, you've compared, and one of them simply feels right in the hand. Speed isn't the enemy. Not knowing what you're holding is. Allison Murray: Settled with the fingertips, then. Alice Pemberton: And then it's folded on the counter while you count out the money, the worked edge turned up on top, the last thing you see before it goes in the bag.

Qorikancha and Santo Domingo: Allison Murray: The scarf went into a bag; afternoon sun catches a curved wall of Inca stone with a Dominican church sitting on top: Qorikancha and Santo Domingo. Nora. Nora Larkin: Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, a chronicler born in Cusco to a Spanish captain and an Inca noblewoman, wrote that the sun temple's walls were covered top to bottom in sheets of gold. One whole wall held a golden sun, a round face with rays and flames. Allison Murray: Did he see it, or is that family legend? Nora Larkin: He was born after the gold was stripped, so this is inherited memory. He called it what he swallowed in the milk and saw and heard from his ancestors. His mother's people were Inca nobility, and he grew up in this city before leaving for Spain. Allison Murray: So what's actually standing there this afternoon? Nora Larkin: A working Dominican convent: a quiet cloister, baroque arches, a fountain in the middle, bells somewhere off. The Dominicans built onto the temple taken from the sun's priests. All round that cloister the Inca chambers survive, niches and all, carrying the church. Allison Murray: August, start with that curve, because from outside it looks almost too smooth to be real. August Mercer: It's the curved wall of the main sun temple, and it's real enough. Andesite blocks, cut and fitted without any mortar, so closely that the joint looks like a fine incision. Then the colonial building begins on top, and the difference is plain at once. You can see where one set of builders stopped. Nora Larkin: But a perfect joint is a lovely alibi. It can't tell you what hung on it. Garcilaso describes a broad gold border running round the top of the cloister. Where it ran, there's plaster now. August Mercer: No, the stone won't testify about the gold. It testifies about a choice. The Dominicans kept those Inca courses as their foundation, and the Inca had laid them dry, leaning slightly inward. Later, earthquake damage exposed more Inca wall, largely intact. Allison Murray: The earthquake did the excavating. August Mercer: Very nearly. And it helped make the seam read so sharply today. Much of the older work held; the newer work suffered. Allison Murray: Which ticket gets me in among those chambers, rather than admiring the curve from outside? August Mercer: The temple and convent have their own admission ticket. It covers the cloister and the Inca rooms. Bring cash in soles, and give it an hour or so. Allison Murray: One account you read, one wall you stand beside. Nora, which does a visitor need more? Nora Larkin: Both, because the book supplies what the wall can't. Garcilaso's garden of the sun had life-size maize in gold and silver, stalks, leaves and ears, and llamas with their young, set out as if grazing. None of it is on display. It's a description you carry in with you. Allison Murray: And the wall, August? August Mercer: The wall is the half nobody could melt down. The gold plates were stripped and melted; the stones stayed, and the newcomers built on them. In afternoon light, that curve is a record still standing where it was made. Allison Murray: One went into the furnace, the other got a church on its head, Nora. Nora Larkin: The gold is gone. The stone is still there, holding up the church.

Pisco at Museo del Pisco: Allison Murray: After stone that keeps its silence, a room of glass that won't. In the neighbourhood of the wide open square of the Plaza de Armas, afternoon light runs along shelf after shelf of bottles at Museo del Pisco, and the first decision comes before the first sip. Margaux, small pours or a finished cocktail? Margaux Delacroix: Small pours, every time. Order the cocktail first and the lime and sugar decide for you. A flight puts the bare spirit in front of you, before anything gets the chance to soften it. Allison Murray: So what lands on the table? Margaux Delacroix: Usually four little glasses, picked by region, grape or style. And it's nose first. You smell each one before you sip, because the grape shows itself in the aroma. One glass almost perfumed, the next one quiet, nearly shy. Allison Murray: A bartender explaining, everyone sniffing. Iris, is this a drink or an exam? Iris Marchetti: Only an exam if you let it be one. Nobody has to find the correct glass. You say this one smells like a fruit bowl, your friend says hospital corridor, and suddenly you're both laughing and actually paying attention. Margaux Delacroix: Laughing is lovely. But by the third glass I will have a favourite, and I refuse to pretend otherwise. That's what comparing is for. Iris Marchetti: Have one. Just don't crown it. Treat it as information. Tell the bartender which glass you kept drifting back to, the sour one, the fruity one, the herbal one, and you've started your cocktail order without opening the menu. Allison Murray: A clue, then. A clue to what? Margaux Delacroix: To a whole wine country. That small glass carries a grape, a quebranta or an Italia, grown in a region like Ica, far from these mountains, and the climate there ends up in the smell. Allison Murray: Not a Cusco spirit at all. Margaux Delacroix: No. Peru's national spirit, born when Spanish colonists planted vines in the south and started distilling the wine. Cusco simply lets you line the regions up side by side. Allison Murray: Iris, what does that line-up do to the next order? Iris Marchetti: It narrows it. Love the perfumed glass and you might fancy something fruity, maybe a house macerado, pisco steeped with strawberry or lemongrass. Prefer the quiet one, and a sharp Pisco Sour might appeal. Allison Murray: Is there more than one way to do the flight, Margaux? Margaux Delacroix: A basic flight, or a more advanced one, with a bartender guiding you through how each glass was grown and distilled. You can book ahead or arrange a tasting at the bar. Allison Murray: Then the sniffing stops and somebody commits. Iris, does the table survive? Iris Marchetti: It exhales. The little glasses get nudged aside, someone orders anticuchos, grilled skewers, and the afternoon stops being a lesson and goes back to being a drink with friends. Margaux Delacroix: Mostly. I'm still hunting whatever I smelled in that first perfumed glass, somewhere under the lime. Allison Murray: Tasting notes at a bar. Iris, confiscate her pen. Iris Marchetti: She doesn't need a pen. She's keeping a private grudge against the other glasses. Margaux, which one would you leave on the table? Margaux Delacroix: The first one, with a last finger of spirit in it, right beside the cocktail. Under the light off those shelves it looks like nothing much, just a little glass. It's the whole reason the drink next to it is yours.

Cusco Cathedral: Allison Murray: From one small glass held up to the light to a nave built for a whole city. In Cusco Cathedral the candles are lit, a woman kneels at a side altar, and visitors drop their voices unasked. Gideon, what strikes you before the gold? Gideon Thorne: Stone, and plenty of it. The Catedral Basílica de la Asunción is a massive block with oddly stubby towers, and inside, great cross-shaped pillars march down three naves. Before a single painting, it feels almost severe. Allison Murray: Severe isn't what I'd want from a church. Frances? Rev. Frances Calder: Severe is what makes room. Those pillars split the space, so Mass can go on at the high altar while someone prays quietly in a side chapel along the aisle. It's a working church, with Mass on Sundays in Quechua too. Allison Murray: So what does a sightseer sort out first? Rev. Frances Calder: A ticket of its own. The city's general Boleto Turístico doesn't cover the cathedral; the Religious Circuit ticket does, and it takes in the church of San Blas as well. Bring your passport. Allison Murray: Who decided it should look this stern, Gideon? Gideon Thorne: Nearly a century of people. Ground was broken around fifteen sixty, directors came and went, and a new viceroy's arrival slowed everything down. Allison Murray: Committee architecture. That never ends well. Gideon Thorne: Except one man gave it its final shape. Miguel Gutiérrez Sencio took charge around sixteen fifteen, a devotee of the pure, sober style of El Escorial. He's credited with the final design, and with the solidity you feel in those pillars. Allison Murray: Frances, does the woman at the side altar care who designed it? Rev. Frances Calder: Probably not, and that's my worry about visitors too. It's easy to treat this as a gallery with pillars, ticking off silver and canvases, and miss that the candles in front of you were lit by someone asking for something. Gideon Thorne: The building's on your side, though. The plainness is a frame: against bare stone, the silver-covered high altar and the carved cedar choir stalls stand out like jewellery on a dark coat. Allison Murray: And those stubby towers? Somebody ran out of money. Gideon Thorne: An earthquake. In sixteen fifty, the year after Sencio died, a quake brought down the ribbed vault, and the plans changed: the towers' third tier was simply left off. So they sit low, and the whole church looks built to stay standing. Allison Murray: Frances, give me one painting to hunt for. Rev. Frances Calder: Marcos Zapata's Last Supper. Christ and the apostles at table, and in the middle, where you'd expect the Passover lamb, a roasted cuy, a guinea pig, with local fruit and chicha. Allison Murray: Guinea pig at the Last Supper. Rev. Frances Calder: Everyone laughs, and they should. But it hangs in a church where that meal is still remembered at Mass. The cuy is one detail; the altar is the point. Allison Murray: Gideon, when did they first say Mass in here? Gideon Thorne: Sixteen fifty-four, nearly a century after the first stone. The man who gave it its shape never heard it. Rev. Frances Calder: And it's still being said. In the low afternoon light the candles are going, the silver of the high altar catches them, and someone kneels in front of it without looking at the silver at all.

A Ceramic from San Pedro: Allison Murray: The Cathedral kept its gold in the dark, at a scale nobody carries home. Back under the iron roof of the Mercado Central de San Pedro, painted clay glints from the handicraft stalls, small enough to cup in one palm. Beth, what are you reaching for? Beth Hartley: A little bowl, or a figurine. I honestly can't decide from a step away, so I'd just pick one up. Geometric bands, animals curling round the sides, all stacked between the alpaca and the panpipes. The weight in your palm decides more than the shelf does. Allison Murray: And then the paint has to earn its place. Katie, what does it tell you? Katie Galbraith: That a person probably held the brush. Hand-painted pieces drift. One stripe comes out fatter, or a zigzag doesn't quite meet itself. If everything's glossy and identical stall after stall, think factory. But a wobble is a clue. It isn't a birth certificate. Beth Hartley: I'm not buying a birth certificate, though. If the little animal on the rim makes me grin, that's the whole case. You're allowed to simply like a design. Katie Galbraith: Liking it is the best reason there is. But settle the size now, while you can still drift between stalls. I'd keep it small enough to vanish into a daypack. Allison Murray: Fine, small. But bowl or figurine, what changes once it's in your hands? Beth Hartley: With a bowl, you run your thumb right round the rim for chips. Then tip it toward you and look inside, because the painted interior is the bit you'll actually see, every single time you drop your keys in it. Katie Galbraith: A figurine, you turn upside down. Is the base flat? Does it stand on its own, or rock like it's had one pisco too many? Then the painted details, close up: the eyes, the feet, the tiny pattern on its back. Allison Murray: Ah, the pisco test. Beth Hartley: Or skip the tests, hold two up side by side, and let the colour pick. Katie Galbraith: Then feel the finish. Run a finger over it. Smooth glaze everywhere, or a little rough clay showing at the foot? Beth Hartley: Rough at the foot. That's the one. Katie Galbraith: That's the one you like. Which is allowed! Now ask the stallholder where it came from. Allison Murray: And the stallholder actually knows? Katie Galbraith: Ask, and you may hear a village: Raqchi, say, or the Cuyo communities near Pisac, where potters still shape and paint this clay by hand. That's worth having. Just remember the answer came from a person, not from the paint. Allison Murray: All this deliberation for something the size of a teacup, Beth. Beth Hartley: Small things deserve it! Then comes the friendly haggle, regateo con amabilidad, which is bargaining with good manners. Smile, make an offer, and if you take a second piece from the same stall, the price tends to soften. Allison Murray: Two teacups. Escalation. Beth Hartley: Cash, in small notes, across the counter, and the little bowl comes back to you with a nod. Into a sock, into the daypack, so light you forget it's there until you unpack and it's grinning up at you.

Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús: Allison Murray: A little ceramic disappears into a daypack; the Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús fills a whole wall with carved pink stone. Back at the great square, its twin towers lift into every camera in Cusco. Everyone takes that picture, so what's the smaller thing, Aubrey? Aubrey Vellum: A balcony. Right in the middle of all that carving, high up, there's a balcony with no railing and a cross above it. The whole front is a portal-retablo, retablo being the altarpiece, so the church wears its altar on the outside. Allison Murray: Quite a rival for the Cathedral. Aubrey Vellum: Which was precisely the trouble. After the earthquake of sixteen fifty, the Jesuits rebuilt on a grand scale, and a lawyer went to law claiming they would overshadow the Cathedral. Legend says the quarrel reached Pope Paul the Third himself. Delicious story. The dates make it impossible. Allison Murray: And the Jesuits built it anyway. Aubrey Vellum: And filled it. Their college stood beside the church, and their schooling and preaching shaped colonial Cusco until the order was expelled. Before any of them, this ground was Amarucancha, Huayna Cápac's palace: the enclosure of the great serpent. I could say that phrase all afternoon. Allison Murray: Is it still a working church, or a museum now? Aubrey Vellum: Very much a church. There are masses morning and evening, and visitors are asked for modest dress, quiet voices and no flash. Then comes the decision at the door. If you're seeing several churches this afternoon, the religious circuit ticket already includes this one. If it's only the Compañía, you buy your ticket right there. Allison Murray: And one step later, the square goes quiet. Aubrey Vellum: Utterly. Outside, the stone performs. Inside is one long nave, and light drops from the lantern at the top of the dome and picks out the carving where the dome meets the walls. Allison Murray: Light from above, like a stage cue. Aubrey Vellum: And at the far end, the great altarpiece, carved in cedar and covered in gold leaf, its columns twisting like barley sugar, takes that falling light and passes it slowly down the gold, column by column.

A City Claims Its Public Life: Allison Murray: All that gold leaf assumed Spain's hold on Cusco would last forever. One man bet his life, and his family's, that it wouldn't, Hugo. Hugo Carr: He bet with an army, Allison. Long after the conquerors had remade Cusco as their own, José Gabriel Condorcanqui, fighting as Túpac Amaru the Second, chose open revolt against Spanish rule: the Great Andean Uprising of seventeen eighty and eighty-one. It failed. He was captured, paraded into the city and made to watch the executions of his wife, Micaela Bastidas, and members of his family. Then, in seventeen eighty-one, colonial authorities executed him publicly in the main square, as a lesson to anyone watching. Crushing the revolt cost more than a hundred thousand lives, most of them Indigenous. Allison Murray: An unbearable price, and collected in public. Hugo Carr: And that square kept its grim purpose right up to independence. The Indigenous chief Mateo Pumacahua died there too. Then Peru broke free of Spain, and republican officials took over the institutions, while the old ceremonial heart sat shabby and diminished. Real attention came later, from the municipality: a cast-iron fountain, flower beds, electric light, the market trade sent off to San Pedro. A handsome stage for tourists. Residents with impaired sight or limited mobility still meet barriers there. What survives is the look of the old streets: worn cobbles, carved wooden balconies leaning out above them, colonial bones kept beautifully, if not for everyone.

One Woven Piece at San Pedro: Allison Murray: That was a killing staged for a whole square to watch, and it is a hard thing to set down. Back under the iron roof of Mercado Central de San Pedro, the light in the handicraft wing has gone amber, and Quechua and Spanish are still haggling over the ponchos. Alice, where does a first-timer even start? Alice Pemberton: Small. Not the whole wall of ponchos and mantas swinging overhead. Pick one woven bag you can lay flat across two hands. A stall full of earth tones and bright dyes is just colour. One piece is the only way to stop seeing a wall and start seeing a weave. Allison Murray: Fine, it's in your hands. What hits you first? Alice Pemberton: Weight, before I've even looked. Good alpaca feels cool the instant you touch it, and denser than it looks. Then the pattern takes over: stepped shapes, crosses, little animals marching along a band. I want the one I could still draw from memory on the flight home. Allison Murray: Katie, you've gone straight past the animals to the edge. Katie Galbraith: Because the edge is the honest bit. Looped fringe is typical of backstrap-loom weaving. Cut ends or a neat machine hem mean a different finish. What no edge will tell you is who wove it. Alice Pemberton: So now I'm hunting for loops. But I'm not buying a fringe. If the looped one has a pattern I'd never wear, and the cut one makes me grin, honesty doesn't oblige me to take home the wrong one. Katie Galbraith: No, and wanting it is a perfectly good reason. I just want you wanting what's really there. So rub a corner while you decide. Alpaca shouldn't crackle with static or give off a faint plastic smell, and a bargain that seems too good often signals a blend. Allison Murray: And all this squinting and rubbing has to happen when? Katie Galbraith: Before about six, when the stalls close. That's the real choice. A cooperative elsewhere sells you documented origin. San Pedro sells you your own judgement, paid in cash. So make it the last daylight hour, not a night out. Allison Murray: Alice, the vendor shakes a poncho open and your arms learn what dense means. Alice Pemberton: Which is the moment to hold it up to the last of the light and compare two bands of the same motif. On handwoven cloth they can differ slightly. One step is a thread wider, or a cross leans slightly. These designs often carry community meaning, but the pattern alone can tell me the meaning of this one, so I'll remember its shape instead of inventing a story. Katie Galbraith: And that wobble suggests a person rather than a machine. It doesn't certify a village. Look at the yarn as well: a hand-spun twist, no synthetic sheen, and colour that drifts a little along the row the way natural dye can. Allison Murray: Folding it back up feels like signing a contract. Alice Pemberton: Katie, once it's folded and the cash has changed hands, what do I actually know? Katie Galbraith: That it's cool and heavy, the fringe loops, and the stepped band wanders a thread here and there. Not who made it, not what it means. And that you couldn't put it down, which was always your half of the evidence.

San Blas: Allison Murray: One woven piece folds into your hands; at dusk San Blas opens out into a whole hillside going gold, whitewash and blue balconies. That's the postcard. But under it there's water falling. Is that sound as old as it seems, Thomas? Thomas Walker: Not as timeless as it sounds. That's the Paccha, the cascading fountain at the heart of Plaza San Blas. Fountains were part of the neighborhood's municipal makeover. Allison Murray: So the timeless trickle had a municipal beginning. Thomas Walker: Which is where the city stepped in. The municipality decided this little square was worth tending as public space. It improved the plaza, paved streets and put in modern lighting. Allison Murray: And redesigned the lot, I'd guess. Thomas Walker: The houses got attention too: facades and rainwater systems were part of the work. So that soft evening glow on the stones is a wiring decision. Allison Murray: Bohemian, by municipal contract. Thomas Walker: And the bigger contract sits in the church of San Blas, built over an Inca shrine to Illapa, the thunder god. There's one object that makes the point: the pulpit, carved from a single cedar trunk and widely attributed to the Indigenous master Juan Tomás Tuyro Túpac. Allison Murray: One tree, and all that carving. Thomas Walker: Later, Cusco's culture authorities restored the church's structure and its art, from foundations, roof and doors to altarpieces, murals, paintings and painted saints. Allison Murray: Gilding first would've been more fun. Thomas Walker: Sure, until the gold gets wet. You fix the roof, then you earn the shine. Allison Murray: And those cobbled lanes keep climbing. Thomas Walker: Steeply, and the altitude makes that count. Wear sturdy shoes and go at a slow pace. If that incline changes your plan, take it in short stretches. Allison Murray: Cobbles that tip your ankle every third step. Thomas Walker: And nobody renovated the work itself. In the side lanes the workshop doors open onto the street, and you get the smell of wood shavings. The Mendívil family still makes those long-necked saints from gypsum and reed.

Dinner at Chicha: Allison Murray: The hillside workshops smell of wood shavings; upstairs at Chicha por Gastón Acurio, timber beams and chandeliers frame a balcony above Plaza Regocijo, with the great open square of the Plaza de Armas still in mind. The first decision is on the table. What kind of dinner are you here for, Margaux? Margaux Delacroix: Something only this region could put on a plate. Gastón Acurio, one of the country's leading chefs, created this place to spotlight local produce, like trout, alpaca and native potatoes, with contemporary technique. I want the Andes doing the talking, and the kitchen merely translating. Allison Murray: Emma, before we get anywhere near a plate, how does anyone get a seat? Emma Cartwright: You book. It's open every day from noon to half past ten at night, and for dinner a reservation is strongly recommended, by phone or on the restaurant's own site. Turn up at eight on a whim and you may be admiring the balcony from the plaza. Margaux Delacroix: Darling, a reservation is not an order. You've won yourself a chair. Nobody has fed you anything yet. Emma Cartwright: And the chair comes first. Table, then menu. Ask for the balcony if you can, so you're reading the starters with the colonial rooftops lit up beyond the rail. Allison Murray: And on that menu, what would a first-timer actually recognise? Emma Cartwright: Lomo saltado, the stir-fried beef with fries that I'd call comfort. It's been one of the mains here. Menus shift, so it's never a promise, but when it's on, that's my order. Allison Murray: Margaux is making a face. Margaux Delacroix: A loving face. I'd go for the causa rellena de Cusco: a little tower of yellow potato and ají amarillo, the golden chilli, filled with alpaca or local trout, finished with herb and rocoto creams. If the kitchen's making it that night, that's the plate that tastes of here. Emma Cartwright: You're ordering the animal from the sweater shops. Margaux Delacroix: Which is exactly why it counts. Alpaca carpaccio, trout tiradito. The region, on a fork. Emma Cartwright: And I'm ordering exactly what I expect. That's the pleasure: I know roughly what's going to land, and the portions here are generous. Margaux Delacroix: Generously predictable. Allison Murray: Then the plates land, and all that deciding stops. Margaux Delacroix: Everything slows down. Steam off the potatoes, chilli in the air, and under those beams the talk drops the way it does once forks are moving. Starters, mains, then perhaps the chocolate globe for dessert. This is a meal that wants lingering, not hurrying. Allison Murray: Emma, what's in the glass? Emma Cartwright: If you've already done a pisco tasting, one pisco sour and you're done thinking. Or chicha morada: house-made, a non-alcoholic corn drink, the one that shares the restaurant's name. Allison Murray: Margaux, a relaxing dinner is either beef you know or alpaca you don't. Nobody here agrees on relaxing. Margaux Delacroix: I'll concede it. Lomo saltado is a perfectly sound order. A good kitchen shows its hand in the familiar dish as much as in the daring one. Emma Cartwright: And the causa is a perfectly sound dare. Same table, same rooftops: one plate you already love, and one that tastes of Cusco.

The Twelve-Angled Stone: Allison Murray: Leave the dinner-table clatter for a lane where footsteps echo off stone, and one block a whole country carries in its pocket, Nora. Nora Larkin: The Twelve-Angled Stone, on Calle Hatun Rumiyoc. It sits in a wall long identified as the palace of Inca Roca, the sixth Sapa Inca, which was the title of the Inca ruler. The street lamps catch it at about head height, a dark green block in a long run of dark green stones. Allison Murray: A whole palace wall, and the cameras queue for one block. Why that one? Nora Larkin: It has twelve angles on a single face, and every one meets a neighbouring stone with barely a hairline between them. No mortar between them. The stones around it fit it the way a family fits round a table. Allison Murray: It sounds very solemn for a lane full of people walking home. Jack, monument or street? Jack Hadley: Street, first. It's a working pedestrian lane, with craft shops, galleries and restaurants along it, and it doesn't stop for you. At night the lamps pick out every bulge and boss on those stones, so you get the photo, then you step aside, because other people have places to be. Nora Larkin: Step aside, yes, but don't walk on, Jack. This was somebody's house. A ruler and his panaca, his royal lineage, had their palace here. If all we do is queue, click and leave, the street wins and the man vanishes. Jack Hadley: Fair. So the wall deserves a short pause. It runs nearly the length of the street, and includes quieter stones said to be carved as a puma and a serpent. Nobody queues for the serpent. Allison Murray: Poor serpent. So how much of this can you actually see? Jack Hadley: All of the outside, at any hour, for nothing. It's a public street. The Museum of Religious Art inside the palace is a separate visit, with its own hours and its own fee. Allison Murray: So the famous photograph is a crop. Jack Hadley: A very good crop. Ruthless, really. The block in the middle is about a metre high, and it's sharing the frame with a whole street. Allison Murray: Nora, what became of the house the crop leaves out? Nora Larkin: It outlived its owners. With a colonial mansion built on the Inca base, the house later became the Archbishop's Palace. Earthquakes have brought down colonial walls around here. This lower course has stayed put. Allison Murray: The house moved out, but the wall stayed. Nora Larkin: It did, Jack. Think of it as a household's wall, too. No mortar meant those stones could settle when the ground shook and still hold. The masons weren't decorating a corner. They were making a palace that would stand. Jack Hadley: Which changes the sound of the street. Footsteps on the cobbles, a dozen languages, a waiter calling someone in from a doorway, all of it squeezed past a seam that has held through it all. The lane is noisy. The joint is still tight. Allison Murray: A palace wall that turned into the city's hallway. Jack Hadley: And in San Blas, the workshops are still lit at this hour. Nobody there is in any hurry for your photo either. Allison Murray: Then whose wall is it in the picture, Nora? Nora Larkin: Inca Roca's. Those twelve tight edges in everyone's picture are one corner of his house, still carrying whoever built on top of it.

A Night at Centro Qosqo de Arte Nativo: Allison Murray: At the old palace wall, footsteps and voices crowd one stone. Back near the old Temple of the Sun at Centro Qosqo de Arte Nativo, a quena climbs over a hand drum, and every seat holds the same wish: real dancers, a real band, one whole evening of it. What happens before the lights go down, Emma? Emma Cartwright: You come in through the lobby, and the lobby is a small museum: traditional costumes, traditional instruments, a cafeteria, sometimes a short film on Cusco's history. Tickets are sold at the door, or the Boleto Turístico, the city's combined tourist pass, covers your entry. Allison Murray: Does any of that need you early? Emma Cartwright: The seats do. None of them are assigned, and the theater fills fast, so aim to be in by half past six, while you still get your pick of the rows. Allison Murray: Then the lights drop, and the night changes hands. Theo, who's making that sound? Theo Jones: A real band, about twenty players. Quena, the cane flute. Charango, the little bright-strung guitar. Bombo, the big drum underneath it all. Nobody presses play. That drum is listening to the dancers' feet as hard as the feet are listening to the drum. Emma Cartwright: Lovely, but a first-timer's eyes are on the stage, not the band. What actually tells them one dance has ended and another one's begun? Theo Jones: The clothes tell you first. The dances come from different provinces and communities, each in its own handwoven costume. Saqra has good and evil all tangled up together. Then the carnival dance arrives jumping, streamers flying, and the whole band has to pick up its heels. Allison Murray: And the room sits right up. Emma Cartwright: It keeps doing that. Eight dances or more across the hour, and each one gets a short spoken introduction first, mostly in Spanish, with some English in the busy season. So you get the story, then the feet. Theo Jones: And don't expect a fixed running order. The company carries more than fifty dances, so the running order rotates. One evening it's a sowing dance, another it's traders from the high country, and the band's colour turns with them, panpipes here, the pututu there. Allison Murray: Fifty dances. Who's been keeping them all? Emma Cartwright: This place. It was the first folkloric institution in Peru, founded in nineteen twenty-four, and it still runs workshops to hand the dances and melodies on to the next generation. Allison Murray: In a theater this modest? Emma Cartwright: Modest is the point. From any seat you can see the footwork, the spins, the layers of a pollera, that full festival skirt, swinging out. And in a room this size the clapping gets properly loud. Isn't that the best bit, Theo? Theo Jones: You're watching skirts, Emma. I'm waiting on the last stamp. When the final step and the final hit of the drum land as one sound, that's worth any costume in the building. Allison Murray: One beat, together. Emma Cartwright: Then there's one closing ensemble piece, the applause goes up, the lights come on, there are recordings of the show for sale, and you step out onto Avenida El Sol into the cold night air.

What Remains Visible: Allison Murray: The last stamp and the last drumbeat fade into cold night air. In Cusco, several histories stay visible, but never on equal terms. Inca stone, hauled by conquered peoples paying their tax in labour, still carries colonial plaster and carved wooden balconies on its back. The square where Túpac Amaru the Second was executed fills, every Christmas Eve, with families choosing a Niño Manuelito in his tiny knitted chullo. If you go, find a seam too tight for a sheet of paper. If you stay home, keep that small baby, held tight through the crowd on his way to a family altar. That's Elsewhere. Wherever you go, look again. I'm Allison Murray.