Puruchuco

Puruchuco is a walled adobe compound in the Rímac valley, the residence and administrative seat of a curaca - a local lord - under Ychsma and then Inca rule, built around 1450 and restored in the 1950s by Arturo Jiménez Borja, whose reconstruction gives the ramps, courtyards and painted yellow walls their present form. Next to it lay the cemetery of Puruchuco-Huaquerones, excavated from 1999 ahead of urban expansion, which produced one of the largest Inca-period burial assemblages ever found: thousands of mummy bundles with textiles, ceramics and personal goods, and among them individuals with injuries argued to be from the fighting at Lima during the conquest. There is a site museum with material from the excavations. The compound is surrounded by the city, and the shanty settlement built over part of the cemetery was the reason the rescue dig happened at all.

History

Puruchuco was an administrative centre of the Inca period (1438-1533), the palace of a curaca who lived and governed here under greater lords. Its restoration was begun by Francisco Iriarte Brenner and continued by Arturo Jiménez Borja between 1953 and 1961, and its site museum was the first of its kind in South America (Wikipedia, Puruchuco).

Highlights

• The compound - restored adobe courtyards and ramps of a local lord's seat.
• The cemetery - the adjacent burial ground that yielded thousands of mummy bundles.
• The museum - textiles, ceramics and finds from the rescue excavations.
• The restoration - 1950s reconstruction that shaped the walls you see.

When to go

Year-round. One to two hours including the museum. Closed on Mondays. Best reached by taxi; the Carretera Central is heavily congested.

Before you go

Much of the standing structure is reconstruction. The site sits in a dense, noisy part of eastern Lima with heavy traffic. The museum is small. Human remains from the cemetery are handled sensitively and only partly displayed.

Nearby

Cajamarquilla is further up the valley; central Lima is west.

Key facts