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The Cathedral

The first Cusco Cathedral was built in 1539 at the Suntur Wasi, current Iglesia del Triunfo, but in 1560 there was an order to build a new cathedral on the Kiswir Kancha lot, palace of Inca Wiracocha. The actual Cathedral was declared built in 1664, more than a century after.

The design is constituted by a latin-cross base, the façade has a Renaissance style, very ornamental, and it contains the best manifestations of colonial goldsmith and wood carving, as well as a valuable collection of canvases from the Escuela Cusqueña (Academy of Cusco). There are two auxiliary chapels on its both sides: Capilla del Triunfo and Jesus, Maria y Jose.

The building process had two stages. First, they constructed the Capilla del Triunfo over the old Suntur Wasi (House of God) temple.

Afterwards, they erect the cathedral over the Palace of Inca Wiracocha. The Renaissance style is predominant in the façade and the inside the building, the inner decoration is rich in cedar and alder carvings. The choir and the pulpit stand out due to their beauty.

Due to the crucial period when it was constructed, the Cusco Cathedral inherits the Gothic-Renaissance hybridism of the great Spanish Cathedrals of the XVI century, adding to that the irruption of the patent baroque style in its enormous front-altarpiece and its monumental towers.

Just as in Lima, its storey-lounge is composed by three aisles with two sections of side chapels and a plane front wall. Its ribbed vaults, taken from the late Gothic, lay over the cross-shaped columns of Renaissance style. Here everything is made of stone and it gives the sense of great solidity, which constitutes the main difference with the characteristic lightness of the Lima Cathedral.

Many of its stone blocks have an Incan origin and were brought from the neighboring fortress of Sacsayhuamán.