Tiwanaku

Tiwanaku stands on the high plateau south of Lake Titicaca, amid the monumental remains of a civilisation that once reached across the southern Andes. Its ceremonial heart includes the great Akapana platform, the Kalasasaya enclosure, Pumapunku and a sunken temple. Carefully worked stone gateways and carved figures give the ancient centre a distinctive and imposing character.

The ancient city reached its greatest height of influence between roughly 500 and 900, long before the Incas. Its builders raised temples and platforms while communities cultivated the surrounding highlands. Political power at the centre later declined, but the ruins remained part of the sacred landscape remembered by later Andean peoples. The Incas associated Tiwanaku with accounts of creation and built near the older monuments, giving the ancient place a new role within their own religious world. Its great platforms, open courts and sunken spaces had served as settings for public ceremonies, while the stone images and gateways preserved the work of skilled artisans.

In the sixteenth century Spanish chroniclers encountered the remarkable stonework and described the ruins. A colonial town also developed nearby in the territory of the Aymara-speaking Paka Jaqi. The monumental remains continued to stand above the cold plateau, a reminder of a city whose greatest age had ended centuries before the Spanish arrival.