Ollantaytambo

Located in the Urubamba valley, sometimes called the "Sacred Valley of the Incas," Ollantaytambo lies about midway between Cuzco and Machu Picchu. The site is one of the best surviving examples of a planned Inca town and is the only major Inca town in which the structures have been continuously inhabited since before the Conquest. Ollantaytambo was built as an estate for the Inca Pachacuti on the site of an earlier non-Inca settlement that strategically controlled two of the three routes into the montaña region. During the Spanish conquest the forces of Manco Inca defeated the Spanish at Ollantaytambo.

See alsoMachu Picchu; Manco Inca; Pachacuti.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

John Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas (1970).

Graziano Gasparini and Luise Margolies, Inca Architecture, translated by Patricia J. Lyon (1980).

Jean-Pierre Protzen, Inca Architecture and Construction at Ollantaytambo (1993).

Additional Bibliography

Bengtsson, Lisbet. Prehistoric Stonework in the Peruvian Andes: A Case Study at Ollantaytambo. Göteborg: Göteborg University, Dept. of Archaeology: Etnografiska museet, 1998.

Cárdenas Arroyo, Felipe, and Tamara L. Bray, eds. Intercambio y comercio entre costa, andes y selva: Arqueología y etnohistoria de suramérica. Santafé de Bogotá: Universidad de Los Andes, Departamento de Antropología, 1998.

Glave Testino, Luis Miguel, and María Isabel Remy. Estructura agraria y vida rural en una región andina: Ollantaytambo entre los siglos XVI-XIX. Cusco: Centro de Estudios Rurales Andinos "Bartolomé de las Casas," 1983.

Thomson, Hugh. The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland. Woodstock: Overlook Press, 2003.

                                Gordon F. McEwan