Pisac's Mysterious Ruin

Anything can possibly go wrong went wrong on this trip...

Being blocked from accessing Machu Picchu, our tour guide decided to take us to this incredible site - Pisac's Mysterious Ruin. 

We drove all the way up there. Looking down to the Sacred Valley through the soft green terraces was incredible (Picture 1). However, hiking up to the ruin complex presented a challenge to our local tour guide. So, he literally didn't take us up there (Picture2, the upper right corner on the hill). Because the ruin wasn't on our original itinerary, I didn't know much about it until after we got home. The more I read about it, the more I realized how regrettable it was to not push the guide to take us up there!

Oh well, again, life is the art of imperfection!! 

Cuzco, Peru

January 29, 2024 

Regarding Pisac's mysterious ruin, historian Victor W. von Hagen once pronounced: “Nowhere in all the empire of the Incas is there finer masonry, nor is there elsewhere, even at Machu Picchu, a plan so bold.”

The chief puzzle surrounding Pisac is just what exactly it’s supposed to be.

The problem is partially the site’s architectural diversity.  Barracks, fortifications, civilian residences, temples, aqueducts, agricultural precincts: no other Inca ruin, including Machu Picchu, encompasses such a broad array of infrastructure.

Some scholars, focusing on the complex’s sweeping agricultural terraces, argue that Pisac is a kind of royal Hacienda or estate built by the Inca Pachacutec in the mid-1400s.  According to this theory, the visionary emperor erected a rural villa to commemorate his defeat of the Cuyos, a rival Andean group who resisted Inca rule.  Pisac’s terraces thus would have provided corn, potatoes, and peppers for yet another imperial country home, Machu Picchu.

It’s a case of too little information, clearly. Regarding Pisac’s function, the historical record is conspicuously silent. None of the chroniclers from the Spanish Conquest mentions it, no recorded battles took place there, no swashbuckling Yalies looking for lost cities broadcast its existence to the world.

What Pisac does have is aesthetics, and in spades. Comprising over four square kilometers of agricultural terraces dotted with clusters of striking edifices, it’s five times the size of Machu Picchu, with some of the most heart-stopping views in Peru.