……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Description of Coricancha
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During the ransom of Atahualpa, in order to pay the full amount of gold, men were sent to Coricancha to strip it of its riches. The temple had many treasures inside, but the grandest feature was the gold covering the temple walls. The accounts say the walls that faced the sun had the finest quality gold, while the shaded walls had a lesser gold. In a later sacking of the temple many gold idols and figures were found, along with masterfully crafted pottery, and a gold band laid along the ceiling.
Coricancha was believed to have a rectangular compound shape that enclosed a courtyard. Two large buildings in the North and South respectively, with two medium and two small making up the other sides. The temple had been built of ashlars to such perfection as to not require mortar. The walls taper slightly as they gain height. The best standing example of Inca architecture is the curving wall, preserved at 20 feet tall, it was even built to accommodate for optical illusion about the walls soundness.
Coricancha was the center of the Incan empire, it lay in the middle of Tawantinsuyu. And was located at the meeting of the Huatanay and Tullumayo streams and in the center of the four suyus. It was the central point for the ceque lines of shrines as well; they radiated out like spokes and followed the “four royal roads”.
The painting by the Cusco-born artist Miguel Araoz shows the distribution of Cusco’s seqes.
During the conquest Juan Pizzaro captured Coricancha; he then turned it over to the Dominicans in 1536. The monks built the first Christian church and monastery over the temple ruins. The church remains today. The temple had been rebuilt once before from an earthquake in 1650, but much of the monastery was destroyed when another earthquake struck in 1950. Pieces of the temple were revealed with the damage. When the restoration team worked in the 60’s and 70’s, they gave priority to Inca influence over Spanish. Today thousands of visitors travel to the Church of Santo Doming to see what remains of the great Coricancha.
Reconstructive map of Coricancha as printed in “Monuments of the Incas”, pg 73, by John Hemming and Edward Ranney. Originally draw by Graziano Gasparini and Luise Margolies in 1974.