Cusco Cathedral

Bells roll across the Plaza de Armas, Cusco's main square. The cathedral fills one whole side of it, twin bell towers flanking a wide front of weathered stone. Pigeons lift and settle on the steps. Step out of the sharp mountain sunlight and into cool air that smells of candle wax and old cedar. The three churches here connect inside, so one visit covers them all.

The building is a statement. It stands on the site of Kiswarkancha, the palace compound of the Inca ruler Wiracocha, facing the great ceremonial square of the empire. When the Spanish rebuilt Cusco as a colonial city, they set their principal church exactly where Inca power had lived.

Construction began in 1560 and took nearly a century. The cathedral was completed in 1654, after generations of architects, earthquakes, and revisions. Much of its stone came from Sacsayhuamán, the Inca complex on the hill above the city, hauled down block by block from walls the conquerors treated as a quarry. Generations of masons, many of them Andean, learned European building on this site.

The plan is Gothic, with ribbed vaults over three wide naves. The front is Renaissance in spirit, and the altars inside grew more Baroque as the decades passed. The result is not one style but a century of styles, fused by grey stone and altitude.

Two smaller churches lean against the cathedral: El Triunfo on one side, the Sagrada Familia on the other. El Triunfo, begun in 1536, was the first Christian church in Cusco. Its name, the Triumph, remembers the Spanish survival of the great Inca siege that year, which the survivors credited to a miracle.

In the north tower hangs the María Angola, one of the largest church bells in South America, cast in the seventeenth century. Its deep tone is said to carry for kilometers on a clear day. Tradition says it is named for an Angolan woman who threw gold into the molten bronze. The story cannot be verified, but the city keeps her name ringing.

The cathedral is a gallery of the Cusco School, the painting movement born when European masters taught Andean artists, and the students made the style their own. Hundreds of canvases hang here. Saints stand among Andean flowers. Gold leaf covers robes and skies, laid on thick, an older language of gold speaking through Christian frames.

One painting draws every visitor. In the eighteenth century, the Andean artist Marcos Zapata painted the Last Supper for this cathedral. On the plate before Christ lies a roasted cuy, a guinea pig, the ceremonial food of the Andes. Around it sit local fruits. The scene is Christian. The table is Peruvian. Zapata signed an Andean identity into the most European of scenes.

In a chapel near the entrance stands the Señor de los Temblores, the Lord of the Earthquakes, a dark crucifix that Cusco treats as its patron. When a catastrophic earthquake struck in 1650, the image was carried into the plaza, and the tremors are remembered as easing. Centuries of candle smoke have darkened the figure almost to black. Every Holy Monday it crosses the city in procession.

The choir is carved from cedar, stall after stall rising in two tiers. The high altar shines with hammered silver from Peruvian mines. Behind it, the sacristy holds portraits of the bishops of Cusco reaching back to the conquest. Side chapels hold painted and gilded altarpieces, each maintained for centuries by the guilds and families of the city.

Earthquakes are the quiet theme of this building. The quake of 1650 damaged it during construction. Another, in 1950, shook the city hard and damaged churches across Cusco. The cathedral was repaired each time. Its low, wide profile and thick walls are not just style. In this valley, they are survival. Restorers still watch the vaults, and you may spot fresh mortar between old stones.

Notice, as you walk, how many details are Andean. Guides point out carvings that look more local than European: mountain flowers, native animals, Andean faces among the saints. The building was raised by Andean hands, on Andean ground, with stones from an Andean fortress. The conquest ordered it, but Cusco made it its own.

Step back onto the plaza when you finish. This square was the heart of the Inca empire, the meeting point of roads from its four quarters. The cathedral has stood over it for nearly four centuries, through earthquakes and empires. The bells you hear were already old when every country on this continent was young.