Sacsayhuamán (Quechua Saksaywaman, from Saksay waman pukara, usually translated “fortress of the royal falcon”) is an Inca citadel on a steep hill at the northern edge of Cusco, Peru, the former capital of the Inca Empire. It stands at 3,701 metres (12,142 ft) above sea level and is known for three terraced walls of enormous fitted stones, the longest about 400 metres long, with the largest single limestone block estimated at between 128 and almost 200 tonnes. According to Inca oral history recorded by Spanish chroniclers, it was built in the fifteenth century under the rulers Pachacuti, Topa Inca Yupanqui and Huayna Capac, on a hilltop first occupied around 900 CE. It was the scene of key fighting in the siege of Cusco in 1536, was largely dismantled for building stone afterwards, and has been part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site together with the city of Cusco since 1983.
3,701 metres: a hilltop 300 metres above Cusco
Cusco lies at around 3,400 metres (11,200 ft) in a valley of the Andes in south-eastern Peru, near the Sacred Valley and the Huatanay and Urubamba rivers. Sacsayhuamán sits on the hill immediately north of the old centre, about 300 metres higher, with a wide view of the valley to the south-east.
That position explains much of the site’s history. It was close enough to the capital to be part of it, high enough to command it, and steep enough on the city side that attackers had to climb. Today Cusco is the seventh most populous city in Peru, with 428,450 people in 2017, and receives more than two million visitors a year, many on their way to Machu Picchu. The 1993 Constitution of Peru names it the country’s Historical Capital.
900 CE: the first occupation, and a “head” for the lion city
Pottery collected from the surface of the hill shows that people were already living there around 900 CE, long before the Inca state existed. Some archaeologists think the hill was first built on during the Killke period that preceded the Incas, and on 13 March 2008 they announced additional ruins on the periphery of the complex that appear to be ceremonial, though their exact function is unknown.
The Inca account of the fortress, as Spanish chroniclers recorded it, is about the shape of the capital. Topa Inca was said to remember that his father Pachacuti had called Cusco “the lion city”: its tail was where the city’s two rivers meet, its body was the great square with the houses around it, and its head was missing. The best head, he decided, would be a fortress on the high ground to the north. In this version the great walls belong to the fifteenth century, begun under Pachacuti and continued by Topa Inca Yupanqui and Huayna Capac. The chronicler Pedro Cieza de León adds a fourth ruler, Huáscar, who he says also worked on it.
20,000 workers in Cieza de León’s 1553 account
The most detailed early description of how the fortress was built comes from Cieza de León, who visited the site twice and wrote about it in 1553. He reported that the Inca ordered the provinces to send 20,000 men, along with provisions from their villages. They worked in rotation for limited periods before being relieved, and a sick worker was replaced and sent home. Each lineage lived in its own huts near the works, and Cieza says the walls of those lodgings could still be seen in his day.
He broke the force down: 4,000 men quarried the stones, 6,000 dragged them to the site with great ropes of leather and cabuya fibre, and the rest dug the foundations and cut posts and beams. Master builders and overseers directed the work. Cieza estimated the complex at 330 paces long and 200 wide, and described stones twelve feet wide and more than twenty feet long, joined so closely that a coin could not be slipped between them. Near the fortress he saw one huge stone that the local people said had “got tired” on the way and could be moved no further.
Three walls, about 400 metres long and 6 metres high
The part of Sacsayhuamán most visitors see is a large open plaza with three massive terrace walls beside it. The longest of the three is about 400 metres. Each stands roughly 6 metres tall, and the total volume of stone in them is estimated at more than 6,000 cubic metres. The plaza could hold thousands of people and was designed for communal ceremonies, and several large structures on the site may also have had ritual uses, so the complex was more than a military work.
The stones of these terraces are among the largest used in any building in the pre-Hispanic Americas, and the precision of their cutting is unmatched in the continent. Many joints are too tight for a sheet of paper. The blocks are not rectangular: they have rounded corners and interlock in irregular shapes, and the walls lean slightly inward. Together these features are thought to explain why the walls have survived the strong earthquakes that have repeatedly damaged Cusco. Pedro Pizarro, who saw the site in the 1530s, described two very high round towers as well as storerooms full of lances, arrows, clubs, shields and helmets; the towers and most of the buildings above the terraces have since gone.
128 to almost 200 tonnes: the largest block
Estimates for the weight of the largest limestone block in the walls range from 128 tonnes to almost 200 tonnes. Stone for the site is estimated to have been moved about 35 kilometres (22 mi) from the Rumicolca quarry. No written Inca description of the method survives, and modern experiments show how hard it was.
The architect and explorer Vince Lee proposed that the blocks were carved first, dragged up a ramp to a position above the wall, set on a stack of logs, and then lowered into their prepared pocket by removing the logs one by one, so that a misfit stone could be lifted and recut. A small-scale trial worked only partly. At nearby Ollantaytambo, a team trying to lower a 1-tonne stone down a slope lost control of it and watched it roll away. In another test about a dozen people pushing and well over 100 pulling on ropes moved a stone of roughly 10 tonnes over cobbles at a good pace. None of these trials came close to what Cieza saw, and the biggest blocks at the site today are more than twice the size of the largest he described.
May 1536: 190 Spaniards, Juan Pizarro and a ten-month siege
Sacsayhuamán saw its one great battle during the Spanish conquest. Francisco Pizarro’s men had taken Cusco on 15 November 1533 and installed Manco Inca as Sapa Inca under their control. In April 1536 Manco left the city and raised an army, estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000 men, though some sources give as few as 40,000. Holding Cusco were 190 Spaniards, 80 of them horsemen, under Hernando Pizarro, with several thousand Indigenous allies.
On 5 May 1536 Inca forces occupied Sacsayhuamán, which the Spanish had left empty, and the next day they attacked the city from it, setting the thatched roofs alight with hot stones from their slings. The steep slope stopped the Spanish cavalry from charging. After about a week, the Spanish concluded that they had to retake the hill. Fifty horsemen led by Juan Pizarro, Francisco’s younger half-brother, broke out and attacked the fortress from outside the city. During the assault a stone struck Juan Pizarro on the head, and he died days later. A night attack with ladders then took the terrace walls, while the Inca held the two towers for a time. The siege of Cusco continued until March 1537 and failed.
The worst damage to Sacsayhuamán came after the war. The Spanish took the site apart for building stone for colonial Cusco. Garcilaso de la Vega, writing in 1609, said there was hardly a Spanish house in the city not built from it. What remains is mostly the blocks that were too big to move.
World Heritage listing and Inti Raymi every 24 June
In 1983 UNESCO inscribed the City of Cusco, including Sacsayhuamán, on the World Heritage List. The site now draws large numbers of visitors, and some of its rougher upper retaining walls are modern additions built for erosion control; they are missing from photographs of the early 1900s, and some carry dates scratched into them. Heavy rain in January 2010 damaged parts of the complex.
The site has also regained a ceremonial role. Inti Raymi, the Inca festival of the sun, held at the winter solstice and suppressed by the Spanish after 1535, has been re-enacted at Sacsayhuamán every 24 June since 1944, about two kilometres from its original setting in Cusco’s main square. The Warachikuy festival takes place there on the third Sunday of September, and on ordinary days people from Cusco jog and practise tai chi on the grass of the great plaza. For the city below the walls, see our guide to Cusco’s geography. For the empire that built them, there is our overview of the Inca Empire’s geography, and for the Inca site most visitors head to next, read about Machu Picchu.