Ollantaytambo

Ollantaytambo is another big half pre-inkan, half inkan site located about 2.5 hours from Cusco and was originally built as a royal estate. During the spanish conquest of Peru, however, it served as one of the last strongholds of the inka resistance against the spanish, as its location on the hill overlooking the narrow sacred valley was an ideal site for resistance. The site itself was again a very interesting mix of some huge well-fitted inkan stone work and buildings and walls made of smaller, less neatly fitted stones. Also here, there is a theory that the site was actually built by pre-inkan cultures (as seen by the smaller stones and the sloppy construction method) before being conquered and ‘topped off’ by the inkas - the guides will sell it to you as purely inkan, though, and explain the different construction types by the inkas being stressed out by the spanish invasion (which is a weird explanation considering that some of the small-stone constructions build the basis of some of the clearly inkan constructions, but what do we know 🤷🏻‍♀️ ).
The town of Ollantaytambo is supercute, though clearly made only for tourists 😉, and was built on the remains of the inka town which belonged to the Ollantaytambo royal estate/later stronghold. Naturally, seeing many of the typical inkan construction elements (such as neatly fitted stones and water canals) throughout the little town really adds to its charme! We definitely recommend a visit :)Read more