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description of the route followed by the mail service between Lima, Buenos Aires and Montevideo. In our own time, the train journey that links Cusco with Puno, following the highest stretch of railway in the world, gives us a good idea of the obstacles the country’s terrain represents when it comes to building road or railway links. Any traveller on this journey would be amazed at the sight of the valleys and gorges he glimpses through the train windows as the train crosses innumerable tunnels and viaducts. In Prisoners of the Sun, Hergé places this train at the centre of the action, making Tintin’s adventures in Peru especially exciting.
Immediately after a new city was founded in the Americas, plots of land were distributed. The architects, in agreement with the authorities, were entrusted with the task of measuring the plots and distributing the water throughout the city. The conquistadors, as representatives of the Spanish Crown, adjudicated plots in the Plaza Mayor or main square for the High Church or Cathedral, depending on the category of the town or city, the Governor’s Residence, the Audiencia and the City Hall. At the same time, they distributed the remaining plots amongst themselves in order to build their respective mansions. Then they assigned plots to the religious orders. In Lima, the Dominican Order, that played an important role in the conquest of Peru, was granted a plot very close to the Plaza de Armas and in Cusco the Dominicans were given the Inca Temple of the Sun, Coricancha, replacing the worship of the Sun King with the Eucharist host, that was displayed in the open chapel in the apse of the church that replaced the former oratory. In Cusco, the former Palace of Viracocha was demolished on Pizarro’s orders, with a cathedral being raised in its place. The Convent of Santa Clara was also built in Cusco on the site of the former Palace of the Inca Virgins, devoted to the worship of the sun.
Latin American cities, therefore, were built around the main square or Plaza Mayor, the centre and heart of the settlement. In the case of Cusco, formerly an Inca city featuring straight roads, a certain symmetry and buildings constructed “of prime stone”, the Plaza Mayor was the result of the fragmentation of the enormous Huaynapata that, due to its enormous scale and dimensions, exceeded the Spanish model of a Plaza Mayor. Split into three squares, the former urban centre of the Incas was converted into the Plaza de Armas, Plaza del Regocijo and Plaza de San Francisco. The Plaza Mayor, featuring the cathedral, raised by means of tiers—as proposed by Alberti—and the School and Church of the Society of Jesus, is one of the most impressive urban areas found in any city centre. Culminating its role as a symbolic site, the Corpus Christi celebrations bring together the June solstice with the two religions, the Sun and the Eucharist. The Plaza del Regocijo, with its City Hall and daily local market, was where bullfights were staged, along with jousting and other public “entertainments”. The Plaza Mayor or Plaza de Armas in Lima was the location for the Cathedral, Palace of the Viceroys, City Hall, Fountain and other elements typical of the seat of the Government of Peru, and the remaining houses, according to the Carmelite Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa, featured “many windows, were made of brick and boasted galleries”. In its capacity as a hierarchical model, the Plaza de Armas in Lima has always served as the embodiment of the image of power of the absolutist city. In other Peruvian cities we can also find some formal variations on the theme of the Plaza Mayor, such as the example in Arequipa, in which the cathedral is built with its nave running parallel to one side of the square. In the native Indian towns of the Sierra, the squares have posa chapels and high open chapels in the façades of the churches. Their role was determined by the need to evangelize and indoctrinate the native population. In cases such as Chincheros, this syncretism and superimposition of religious beliefs is quite evident. The same could be said for the Church of San Pedro Apóstol in Andahuaylillas, known as the Andean Sixtine Chapel due to its extraordinary interior.
Architectural construction in Peru was conditioned by the nature of the land. The country is divided into two main areas: the coast and the mountains. On the coast, the essential building material was brick and sun-dried clay whilst in the mountains builders employed stone. On the coast, where there is very little rainfall, the roofs of the buildings were flat or built in the form of terraces. Conversely, in the mountains, where a rainy season exists, the roofs of the buildings were covered with Moorish tiles. Earthquakes were a decisive factor in deciding the structure of these buildings, obliging the builders to employ anti-seismic techniques. In Cusco, which suffered a huge earthquake in 1650 that meant the majority of the city’s buildings had to be rebuilt, the walls were mainly thick and
solid. These earthquakes also meant that the buildings were laid horizontally and the towers on the churches were not built very high. In Lima, where stone was only employed for the portals—for the façade of the Church of La Merced the stone was imported from Panama as ballast in the galleons—the frequent earthquakes in 1609, 1677 and 1746 obliged the architects to invent effective techniques to counter seismic trembles. In 1609 the groined and arris vaults of the cathedral were replaced with lighter, more flexible and resistant fan tracery vaulting, made of cedar-wood. Also in the cathedral, following the earthquake of 1746, the former brick pillars were replaced with thick wooden beams covered in masonry, brought to Lima from Guayaquil. Jorge Juan and Juan Antonio de Ulloa, in their A Voyage to South America refer to the slender towers of the Churches of Pisco, Chincha and Nasca, which, in order to give them their graceful form, were endowed with a straight skeleton of “elastic structure”, obtained through the fastening of posts and quarters with leather bindings. The most intelligent technique employed in constructing buildings of “Roman” appearance, similar to those of Castile and Andalusia, was known as “quincha”, that is to say, “canes covered in mud plaster”. Discovered after the earthquake of 1687, this technique was employed to deceive the eye of the observer, fooling him into believing that the building was made of stone. Canes from Guayaquil were employed together with wattle found on river-banks, intertwined with strips of rawhide, known as “huasca”, taken from cows or lambs. Mud and lime were then mixed with ground sugarcane molasses, “miel de barro” or “mud treacle”, a substance that made a light but very apt material for covering walls and vaults with wooden structures. This reed and adobe combination, stuccoed and painted in imitation of ashlar stones, gave these buildings an entirely solid appearance. The Church of San Francisco in Lima is the best and most spectacular example of this form of architecture, that is both grandiose and impressive in terms of appearance.
The Gothic style “in Peru left behind so few examples that we might almost state that it failed to arrive in time”, is how Marco Dorta, the great Spanish scholar of South American architecture, put it. Unlike Mexico, we can find very few remains of Gothic art, largely due to earthquakes, but also due to the late period in which Peru was conquered. The greatest number of buildings that have been preserved date from the Renaissance period, especially in Huamanga, today known as Ayacucho, and the region of Cusco and El Callao, featuring churches consisting of a single, long and narrow nave covered in wood and tile, and a tower attached to the foot of the building, whose entrance is found on the lateral façade, that opens out into a large atrium designed for imparting the Christian doctrine. The cathedrals begun in the 16th Century and completed in the early 17th Century also date from this period. Apart from the Cathedrals of Ayacucho and Puno, we might mention those of Cusco and Lima, in whose construction the Extremaduran architect Francisco Becerra was involved. Born in Trujillo (Cáceres), he first worked in Mexico, on the Cathedral of Puebla de los Ángeles, and in Ecuador, in Quito, on the Churches of Santo Domingo and San Agustín. Called to Lima in 1582 by Viceroy Martín Enríquez de Almansa, he participated in the works for the Palace of the Viceroys and on the Fort of El Callao. It appears that he produced designs for the Cathedral of Cusco. Becerra died in 1605 and his influence consisted of having determined the model of cathedral used in Latin America, featuring three naves with chapels on the side. This model of church originated in the design of the Cathedral of Seville and culminated with the Cathedral of Jaén in 1540.
The grand monasteries of the mendicant orders and the Jesuit churches and colleges were, without any doubt, the second most important architectural undertaking in Peru after the cathedrals, especially during the Baroque period. With their sacristies, convent buildings, cloisters, inner staircases, libraries and other rooms, these architectural constructions form an entire world of their own, one in which we find not only marvellous altarpieces, paintings and sculptures, but also impressive tiling work, paving and ceilings. In the case of the Monastery of San Francisco in Lima, with its spectacular courtyard, the dimensions of this building as a whole may provide an indication of the wealth and importance of these monasteries and convents, buildings that served a religious purpose and played a fundamental role in the life of the city. In Cusco, for example, leaving to one side the considerable beauty of the Cloisters of La Merced or the interior complex of Santo Domingo, we might describe how, in the Plaza Mayor, the Jesuit College, with its Church and adjacent Chapel of El Loreto, rivals the Cathedral, the Parish Church and what is known
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