Walking Tour Continued

Continuing our walk we came into one of the many plaza areas in Cusco. There before us stood a Spanish architectural building constructed in recycled Inca stone blocks with arched windows and doorways, a stone colonnade entrance and ornate domed bell tower. Our guide led us along the colonnade and into the entrance room of what was once the Santo Domingo Convent. Jamie explained that this Spanish baroque-style building was constructed in the 16th century by the Conquistadors, on the ruins of the most Inca's capital city most venerated temple, the Coricancha, the Temple of the Sun. The Incas called it "the golden courtyard" because its walls and floor were covered in sheets of solid gold. The central courtyard was decorated with solid gold statues and at its centre a solid gold disc reflected sunlight into temple through openings in its thick granite walls.

No gold adorns this building today as the Spanish stripped all of Cusco's buildings of their gems, icons and gold which they melted down to fund their expensive expansion campaigns aimed at dominating the Americas. Our guide, Jamie filled us in on some historical facts about this impressive building. He began by stating that the has one of the best preserved examples of Inca architecture because the Spanish colonials simply built their Santo Domingo Convent around the Inca's Coricancha, Sun Temple and then constructed a second storey above the ancient edifice. As a result, the Inca walls that were once the exterior of the Coricancha, are now part of the interior walls of the convent's cloister. Jamie then took us into the building to see an impressive six-meter-high curved wall section which has been incorporated into the building of the Church and Convent complex. This section of ancient Inca wall is a wonderful tribute to the engineering skills of the Inca people because unlike much of the Spanish architecture in Peru, this Inca wall is in remarkable condition today. It has withstood three major earthquakes since the 1600's and destruction by Spanish conquerors. We were able to touch and massive stone wall and see just how tightly the stones were aligned and knit together. We also looked through the trapezium-shaped windows, similar to those we saw in Machu Picchu. The priests of the Sun Temple used these structures to make astrological calculations and observations to assist them in predicting the seasons and creating the Inca calendar.

We wandered through the convent rooms and corridors and out into its beautiful inner central open courtyard. The courtyard has a cobbled surface and in the centre of the courtyard a ring of flower-pots encircles a six-sided granite block. This block supported a huge gold disc which reflected sunlight into the Inca Temple before the Spanish came. The gold disc was removed and melted down by the conquerors but the heavy stone rock remains. The interior of the courtyard veranda corridors' walls and ceilings are richly decorated in Spanish tiles. Huge paintings hang along the walls of the veranda corridor. You can see the paintings decorating the walls behind the columns in the photo we took of the inner courtyard.

Most of the courtyard veranda paintings depict scenes from upper class Spanish court life and visits to the monastery within Santo Domingo Convent. We took a photo of one of the paintings, titled: "Christening in the Monastery". All the paintings revealed how completely the Spanish had replaced Inca icons with their own, imposing Spanish culture and religion on the conquered nation.

Inside the monastery chapel a huge collection of paintings by Rubens and Diego de la Puente are displayed on its side walls. Unfortunately we were not permitted to photograph these paintings but we were bemused to note that Diego de la Puente's painting of "The Last Supper" depicts Peruvian dishes, such as chilly, corn and guinea pig instead of instead of the traditional bread and wine. He also depicted the devil hovering near Judas. We thought these were interesting portrayals of an artist's interpretation of Jesus' last meal with his disciples.

Our final tour of this convent complex was to a small museum in a section adjacent to the courtyard of Santo Domingo, where we saw a scaled model of what the Inca Temple of the Sun. may have looked like. An explanation of different areas of the model helped us to understand what a pivotal role this temple played in everyday life of the Inca people and how advanced they were as a civilization.

The museum hold displays of artefacts from pre-Inca, Inca, and colonial periods. Most of these were found during archaeological excavations in the central courtyard area of Santo Domingo. Artefacts include pottery, textiles, sculptures, ceramics and musical instruments. One piece that captured our interest was a large brass etching that displayed diagrams, drawings and symbols. Historians are divided as to the interpretation of this artefact as the Incas did not record historical records in a written language but devised knotted rope-type messages which have decayed over time. Many artefacts, objects with sketches of past events were destroyed by the Spanish and the small number of artefacts with drawings or diagrams that have been found, are difficult to interpret today.