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Ollantaytambo, Inca City
Location:
Ollantaytambo is located to 80 Km. to the northeast of the city of the Cusco and 40 Km. of Machu Picchu for railroad, in the district of Ollantaytambo, province of Urubamba, department of the Cusco.
Altitude:
It ocated to an altitude average of 2,792 m.a.s.l
Climate:
Dry of April to December and rainy of January to March. Due to their position in the convergence of two valleys, at nights a moderate wind usually runs. Temperature average: minimum of 11' at 1 5'C and maximum of 18' at 23'C during the whole year.
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Anciente entrance Inca
to Ollantaytambo |
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The Place
In the Inca's times they called themselves tampus to the cities - lodging that had capacity to harbor thousands of people. They were endowed with gigantic deposits of foods, very good roads and places of astronomical observation. They were also characterized, for the appropriate distance that had separated them of Cusco; to be located in an important route or main route of the Incas, what made easy the rest of the walkers that use to go toward places of great importance, like in this case the Citadel of Machupicchu. Each one of these tampus or tambos were identified when prefixing them an own name, this way, the tambo of Paucar was Paucartambo and that of Ollanta, Ollantaytambo. The singularity of Ollantaytambo resides more than anything, in its strategic location.
The Ruins
According to some specialists and historians; the architectural group of Ollantaytambo belongs to the Imperial Inca stage; comprehend between the Inca Pachacútec and Wayna Capac. This stage embrace to only three generations of Incan gobernors and it preceded the conquerors for only 150 to 200 years. The apparent little time that existed between the design and the construction of this granitic citadel or fortress, makes doubt many investigators regarding its true origin. The defenses that |
are guided toward Cusco, as if they wanted to defend to city of the Incas, they are another of the riddles that Ollantaytambo presents. It is important to emphasize that this fortress shows the provident spirit of the Inca that provisioned it of water by underground aqueducts whose reception places were secret of state in its time and until the present time they are not discovered. Already in the high of the architectural group they are discovered six gigantic blocks that apparently belonged to the Temple of the Sun, neatly worked in the five hard red porfid as if it was a soft material and molding. These enormous and perfectly inserted pieces that they resisted the eradicators of idolatries, they conform a simply admirable stony canvas for their solidity, volume and mutual assembling. In that canvas three Chacanas or Inca crossings are perceived carved in the third stone (seen from right to left). To the view this temple was destroyed and their pieces spread by the floors. For these reasons Ollantaytambo is shown since here as the clearest evidence in the procedure that theinca had to carry out its constructions, the origin, extraction, it is shown carved, transport and perfect assembling of the stones, for the later construction of the imposing archaeological groups that we can admire until today.
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Inca Stores in the Pinkuylluna hill |
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The Town
The Inca town presents characteristic that denote that it was inhabited by residents of a privileged class, just Cusco and Ollantaytambo show so much this great particularity because they are constructions of oneself type, in the high part of the town (on the mountain) and in the plain or valley, this makes the great difference in front of the other architectural groups of Inca origin. The residence group exhibits housings of solid walls of carved rock, with doors in trapezoidal ways and divided by streets of right lines for where the water runs in perfect channels. At the moment, behind an appearance of adobe architecture with colonial influence this ancestral town inhabited by residents that occupy the architectural group in its routine lifestyle. This town daily is visited by residents of the communities thta are located |
far from the city as: Pallata, Huilloc, Patacancha, etc. which present as common characteristic their traditional gear, faces of pure Indian race that know of their history, nothing else that their routine life.
Alive History
The Ayni was the community work with a great sense of solidarity that the capable members of each Ayllu made, in benefit of themselves. That work was carried out with agricultural purpose or with an urban sense (construction of houses). This example of workin g together is appreciated visiting the towns that surround to the town of Ollantaytambo where temporarily every morning one can see as people's groups they go toward the property of one of the neighbors to help him to prepare or to harvest its earth or to collaborate with him to build its housing.
Legend
Ollantaytambo keeps among many things, the secret of two legends: Tunupa's legend and the General Ollanta's legend. In the first one, it is about a messenger of the gods that arrived the town many time beforebefore the creation of the Incan Empire, costumed as a beggar and with appearance of having many years above.
When this carachter arrives was by the residents of the place, especially for their Curaca or Boss who offered him all the honors. Thanking this, Tunupa gave him the walking stick with which traveled. The legend says that that present became gold when were born the son of the Curaca. The first-born who was named Man Capac, he left Ollantaytambo taking it in its hand the golden walking stick and sink it in a near mountain to the Cusco (the Huanacauri) he decided to found the Empire of the Inca and to make its capital or more important city there. The second, speak to us the story of a General of the Inca Empire that fall in love with the daughter of the Inca Pachacutec, he decides to kidnap her and on this way to marry her. The Inca, when trying to recover their daughter of the General hands of this challenger, Ollantaytambo was sieged and after 10 years of arduous battles ithe Inca allows the marriage when he admits the great love that felt Kusi Coyllor, his daughter to the General Ollanta. It is said that for honouring this General the name of the town would come.
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