Why Families Shouldn’t Skip Cusco on a Machu Picchu Trip

More than just a stopping place and staging point for the train trip to Machu Picchu, Cusco is an ancient Inca capital and major city in Colonial Peru. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site, Cusco is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the Americas, and it’s well worth spending a few days here to appreciate the layers of culture from two empires.

The stone walls of the grand buildings erected by the Incas later became the foundations of the also-grand Spanish colonial churches and mansions, and they proved much stronger than the later stonework. Built with carefully fitted irregular stones, the Inca walls withstood major earthquakes that shook Cusco; many of the later Spanish structures did not.

Looking for traces of the Inca walls makes a good treasure hunt for kids — clues are huge stones with seemingly erratic shapes. From both inside and outside the church in Santo Domingo, for example, you can see the impressive curved Inca wall rising nearly 20 feet at the end of the church. This was the site of the Inca’s Coricancha, the Temple of the Sun, its walls lined with sheets of solid gold. It was all melted down by the Spanish and shipped back to Spain; the Inca temple replaced by a church.

To find more Inca walls, walk along Loreto and Hatunrumiyo streets; Loretto is lined on both sides by some of the city’s oldest foundation walls. While the Spanish conquerors shipped most of the Inca’s gold back to adorn churches in Spain, they used the silver on local churches. In Cusco’s cathedral, the main altar is covered in more than 800 pounds of it.

Curious kids and adults can find out more about the Incas and see examples of the gold and metal work in Museo Inka, located in an ornate, 16th-century Spanish mansion. Kids may be surprised to see Inca mummies there.

Interactive displays and videos at Musei Casa Conch fill in the story of the Incas and are a good introduction to Machu Picchu, with an interactive map of the site there, too. Artifacts, from jewelry to cooking pots that were excavated from Machu Picchu at the time of its discovery, are preserved here. You can also see the remains of a floor from an Inca royal residence through a glass floor.

In the evening, join local families strolling around The Plaza de Armas, the heart of Cusco since the time of the Inca Empire. It’s especially lively and beautiful at night, with the buildings lit by spotlights. For more local experiences, head for the narrow streets of the San Blas neighborhood on a hill northeast of the Plaza de Armas. The area is filled with small galleries and artisan workshops, and comes to life in the evenings when shops and restaurants open. San Blas is a good place to go any time on Saturday, when colorful market stalls sell colored weavings and other handiwork. While there, stop in the Church of San Blas to see the ornate gold altar.