Inca Architecture

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c. 1438 – 1572 · Americas · architecture · origin: Cusco

Stone fitted without mortar so tightly no blade slips in, and set into the mountainside

How to recognise it

• Polygonal blocks fitted without mortar
• Trapezoidal doors, windows and niches
• Walls leaning slightly inward
• Terraces following the slope's contours
• Almost no carved decoration

Why it emerged

Pachacuti turned Cusco into the capital of a state that spread along the Andes within a century, building it with mit'a labour tribute. Earthquakes demanded masonry that could survive them, and a uniform style from Ecuador to Chile marked imperial presence.

Examples

Coricanchac. 1438The gold-clad Sun Temple; Spaniards built a convent on it, yet its masonry outlasted earthquakesSacsayhuamánc. 1440Zigzag walls of blocks over 100 tonnes, fitted without mortarMachu Picchuc. 1450Pachacuti's mountain estate, never found by the Spanish; the most intact Inca siteOllantaytamboc. 1450An Inca-planned town still inhabited; here Manco Inca repelled the Spanish in 1537

More in this style

• c. 1490 Ingapirca

Meanwhile elsewhere

• Byzantine art Europe
• Moorish style (al-Andalus) Europe
• Ife and Benin bronzes Africa
• Gothic Europe
• Persian miniature Middle East
• Aztec Art Americas
• Ming and Qing Porcelain Asia
• Russian Icon Painting: Theophanes, Rublev, Dionisius Eastern Europe & Russia
• Italian Renaissance Europe
• Northern Renaissance Europe
• Classical Ottoman Architecture (Sinan) Middle East
• Mannerism Europe
• Mughal Art Asia
• Tented Churches Eastern Europe & Russia

Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English)

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