Hello bloggers! Today we’re talking about the incredible Temple of the Sun in the Inca village of Ollantaytambo. Find out more by reading our blog below.
About the Temple of the Sun in Ollantaytambo:
It’s a place full of magic, and above all, a powerful energy flow you can feel the moment you step into this beautiful and mystical site.
These prominent ruins, towering over the village of Ollantaytambo, were the site of the only major Inca victory against the Spanish forces. Today, they’re also one of the most accessible archaeological sites in the Cusco region, as you can walk directly to them from the town.
Along with the ruins of Pisac, Ollantaytambo is a must-visit for anyone traveling to Machu Picchu (and yes, I highly recommend visiting them before going to Machu Picchu).
Key moment in history:
When the Spanish captured Cusco, Manco Inca fled to Ollantaytambo. In 1536, the Spanish attempted a surprise attack on the valley below. From the top of the fortress, Inca Emperor Manco led his army to defeat the Spanish using stones, arrows, and controlled floods at the bottom of the valley.
In ancient times, Ollantaytambo was a small settlement. When Pachacuti became the ninth Inca and conquered the region, he destroyed the town and turned it into his personal estate. On the hilltop, he built a llaqta (a city-fortress) to defend against the antis (jungle tribes) descending from higher up the valley.
Ollantaytambo is considered a masterpiece of Inca architecture. The main section features 17 impressive terraces leading up to a fortress. At the summit stands an impressive wall with 10 niches and the Gate of the Sun, as well as a monolithic Temple of the Sun made up of six massive pink granite blocks.
The temple has 150 steps separating its upper and lower sections, where the precision of the stonework is clearly visible. Built from granite, the highlight is the Wall of the Six Monoliths, joined together with stone slabs (designed to absorb seismic shocks during earthquakes).
An Extraordinary Structure
This building was intended to be an extraordinary and unique structure—unlike anything else in the Inca world—but it was never completed as originally envisioned. Instead, it was the work of several generations of architects, resulting in surrounding temple walls with a more rudimentary finish, constructed from recycled stones from other buildings, with large gaps filled in with rough, uncut rocks.
The pink granite was quarried from a site about 4 km away, across the Sacred Valley, on the southwestern slope of the mountains. The stones were partially shaped at the quarry and then transported down to the valley floor. To cross the river, the Quechua people built an artificial canal parallel to the natural riverbed, allowing them to divert the river’s flow as needed. While water flowed through one channel, the other remained dry, enabling the stones to be carried across to the opposite side of the valley.
Additionally, the stones were moved from mountain to mountain and then hauled up to the temple site via an inclined ramp resembling a road, whose silhouette is still clearly visible at the bottom of the valley.
Using logs or round stones as wheels, leather ropes, South American camelids (such as llamas and alpacas), levers, pulleys, and the strength of hundreds, even thousands, of workers, these massive stones were transported with incredible effort. Today, along the path connecting the quarry to the temple, you can see dozens of enormous stones known locally as “tired stones,” believed to have been abandoned because they were too heavy to move to their final destination. Some of the blocks used in the Temple of the Sun weigh over forty tons.
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