Exploring the Qorikancha!

It's like equal to like Sacsayhuaman, the foundations and I think when you do a tour you can go inside and you can see like what it's built on. Hello everyone, welcome to the Curricancha in Cusco, Peru. This was once the most important religious site of the Incan Empire. It was converted into a Spanish church in 1538 after the conquests. The exterior of the building is a strange mix of ancient pre-Incan walls, intricate Spanish towers and doorways, and repurposed ancient Incan blocks next to a large courtyard. This was our fourth day in Peru and my family was still adjusting to the altitude so I got to do this one on my own. This was the first site I visited and it was my first time seeing and touching the perfect fitting ancient blocks, so this video will be focusing on the ancient stonework which is inside the building. Even though I had heard a lot about it before the trip, I still just couldn't get over the perfection of these joints. It is amazing to see in person. These little notches were an interesting feature that I didn't see anywhere else. Because the stonework is kept inside it hasn't been weathered as much as the other sites and as the center of the ancient city the quality is unmatched. The walls feature the classic Incan niches which can be seen replicated all over the Sacred Valley but these ones were perfect. It's interesting that they used rectangular shaped blocks at this site where at most other ancient Incan sites the blocks are curving irregular shapes. So I feel like the curved shapes are more difficult to accomplish but here they use these perfect rectangular square blocks. The walls actually lean inward or outward depending on which side you're on at the same angle as the sides of the niches creating a beautiful architectural detail in the corners. There are a few spots where the walls had sunk or pieces had broken off so you could see the perfection of the interior surfaces of the joints. Just incredible. There were also so many areas with various holes and notches that looked like connection points for other materials. Looks as if there was like wooden holes or shafts that connected these holes together. Maybe some kind of gate or something like that. There's this one small section where a bunch of interesting blocks are displayed on a small bench. One block contains a perfect ancient drill hole while the others had other intricate shapes. To me they looked like various plumbing fittings but who knows what the original use was. The t-shaped notches were probably where molten metal would have been poured to connect the two pieces together like a key. This was a crazy protrusion on this one block. It's interesting the contrast between the Spanish, the modern on top, the intricate facades, and then just the stark perfect ancient Incan stuff. Here we have the condor, the serpent, and the puma representing the three realms of the empire. The underworld, the surface world, and then the heavens. Beside it we have some original masonry in place. This one was just so flat. I couldn't believe just how flat and straight these are. To say that these were done just by hand and hammering and pounding with primitive tools just doesn't make any sense. Outside there are all sorts of interesting blocks that were not in their original locations. These incredible artifacts have been gathered and randomly stacked to make guardrails for the walkways. Again I kind of just have to touch everything. The surfaces just are so precise even though they look rough. The tops of the walls on the interior had interesting carvings on them. It's amazing how square the walls are too from above. Perhaps these were indentations for a wooden roof system or maybe even water drainage. Maybe there was another course of masonry that would have been on top of that as the the structure was destroyed by the Spanish. Again we have a lot of notches that were filled with other materials. So it's hard to see with the glare of the glass but this section was very interesting. There's lots of different seemingly functional holes and notches. This double inset doorway was a really really cool feature too. I'd love to do this on a modern house. This was very interesting. This block was polished smooth and you can see the hammered texture on the blocks around it coming up to the polished surface. Were the stones polished beforehand? Was the texture added after construction? Or were the walls polished and hammered later? All the puzzle pieces of this exterior wall were cool. Again it's interesting that they're all angular rectangle shapes rather than the curving circular rounded stones that we see at the other Incan sites. Again lots of nubs of course. Actually a huge one above the tour guide's head. Lots of interesting masonry all lying about. Here we have some of the damaged section where the Spanish masonry with mortar meets up to the ancient Incan. They added a baseboard detail at the bottom. The Incan niche is still in place and then it would have been a doorway as well and then that meets up with the church. This section was crazy. First you can see the perfection of the joints where this is split apart. Even more amazing this section looks like it had been blown apart by dynamite and you can just see the hairline of the joints connecting these blocks and this would have been in the interior of the block so these joints were just absolutely perfect all the way through. Unbelievable and this was interesting too. The bottom half of the wall was flat and the top is rounded and pillowed. This place is crazy. I thought uh I thought coming here and seeing it maybe you could uh look at all the nubs. Here's another one. This block is polished smooth and all the rest have this rough hammered finish. Were they all polished and then hammered later? This is just a massive broken block. Obviously put here later but uh that's crazy. Look at that scorpion flat. Angled angles.