Plaza de Armas and the Cathedral, Cusco, Peru, 1960s

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Plaza de Armas and the Cathedral, Cusco, Peru, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

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Plaza de Armas and the Cathedral, Cusco, Peru, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1960–1969

AA-2026-4587BA

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Two men cross the cobblestones of Cusco's main square with the unhurried gait of people who have never once been early, while the cathedral behind them continues the work it started in the sixteenth century of simply outlasting everyone who passes it. The building was raised on the foundations of an Inca palace using stones pried from Sacsayhuamán, a piece of civic recycling that Spanish colonial planners considered efficient rather than provocative.

A lamppost with cast-iron scrollwork stands sentry at the cathedral steps, doing the era's favourite trick of announcing modern municipal improvement while everything around it stays resolutely colonial. Figures sit on the stairs the way people always have in a plaza built for exactly that purpose, and a single car idles at the far curb like a novelty the town has not fully decided to trust.

The surrounding hills, terraced by generations before anyone in this photograph was born, do the quiet work of reminding visitors that the Spanish arrived late to this valley and merely rearranged what was already a capital.

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