Coricancha, the Main Temple of the Incas
The Incas founded temples of the sun throughout the Empire, the most important being the Pre-Columbian Coricancha temple in the city of Cuzco. It was one of the most revered and respected temples in the city of Cusco, in Peru. The most sacred golden precinct of the Incas, where worship was given to the sun god, the golden kingdom that dazzled the Spanish. They could only fast, barefoot, and with a load on their backs as a sign of humility. A place that seems like a story of a thousand and one nights, with a crowded with gold that inside it contains magnificent riches and works of art.
Building
The construction was a mixture of gold and molten lead. Designed with techniques to resist any earthquake, preventing its fall with an elegant bed of sand, on which thick and solid stone blocks with millimeter precision are laid, transported, modeled, and boxed as if it had been upholstery, united with melted gold. The fences and walls were surprising because they were covered from top to bottom with sheets, plates, and gold planks. The façade was a beautiful wall of fine stonework, decorated in pure gold of a palm high, three meters above the ground, and a roof of beautiful and delicately cut straw. In one of the second-course blocks, three holes are observed that could be used to evacuate the rainwater from the inner courtyard, or as an outlet for the chicha that was offered as an offering to the Sun God. According to the experiments, if it is hit inside from the holes, you can hear the musical notes (re, la, mi). The wall crowned a system of platforms that went down to the river.
The Main Altar and Solar Disk
The solar disk (A sacred object and instrument of supernatural power, which could open dimensional portals, gigantic solid gold like a gold crystal, representing the "Sun". An exquisite piece made with its round face with rays.
Garden
It was the garden of the Sun, it had walls, statues of people, animals, plants and Inca mummies.
Human Sculptures
Sculptures covered in gold chapería, that covered images of the golden feminine and masculine divinities.
Animal Sculptures
They were gold sculptures offered to the divinities; this custom eliminated human sacrifices or reduced it to a minimum. All kinds of animals in their natural positions such as llamas and their shepherds, rabbits, deer, lions, tigers, lizards, butterflies on the branches and large and small snakes that seemed to walk up and down them, some birds that flew, others that they sang, they were on trees, or they were sucking the honey from the flowers and snails and lizards that crawled on the ground.
Plant Sculptures
The most beautiful trees, plants, flowers, and fruits in the kingdom, imitated and perfected in their real size in gold and silver. The sacred root of quinoa and the cornfields with their leaves, ears, reeds, ears of wheat, roots, and flower all of the silver and the hair that the cob of gold casts, soldered one with another that seemed natural.
Sculpture of Objects
Small and large ornamental art objects, vases, queros or sacred vessels, large gold and silver jugs for the chicha solar. The offerings arrived from all over Tahuantinsuyo for the Inca and God the Sun.
Jewelry and Goldsmithing
An essential religious and ritual of Jewelry: necklaces, bracelets, ear muffs, rings, patenas in the heads, patellas in the beard, garlands on headdresses, masks, medals, scepters, and ornaments.
Terrace
In this space of terraces were deposited.
Mummies
Royal mummies of the twelve Inca kings, children of the sun placed by antiquity, in a row, in chairs on tables from Manco Capac, all in solid gold, with jewels and faces embellished with gold sheets, who stood guard with their ancestors in the Chapel of the Sun A splendid golden delight, a sacred place of the Incas, where worship of the sun god was rendered with magnificent riches and works of art.