Sacred Valley history: why the Incas chose this valley
Lower, milder and more fertile than Cusco, the Urubamba valley was the pantry and retreat of the Inca nobility: royal estates, temples to the sun and kilometres of terraces. What you visit today in one day between Chinchero, Maras, Moray, Ollantaytambo and Pisac is that landscape, worked for centuries, with a colonial layer on top.
The valley
A mild strip a day's walk from the capital
Cusco sits at 3,350 m; Urubamba at 2,871, and Ollantaytambo at 2,790. Those five hundred metres meant maize where only potatoes grew above, and a climate where the nobility could spend seasons. That's why the valley filled with royal estates attributed to the Inca rulers and with terraces that are still farmed.
The terraces
The work that shapes the whole landscape
The stepped terraces aren't decorative: they gained soil from the hillside, drained rainwater and stored the day's heat. In Pisac they hug the mountain; in Ollantaytambo they climb to the Temple of the Sun; in Chinchero they run down from the square, and in Moray they close into circles. Seeing them in a single day is the best way to understand what they were for.
Five sites, five chapters
What each stop tells
What to see in the valley →Chinchero
A royal estate on the plateau, with Inca terraces and walls on which a colonial church was built. Today it's also a living textile centre that keeps dyes and looms from before the conquest.
Maras Salt Mines
The only stop older than the Incas: a salt spring worked since pre-Inca times, inherited by the Incas and today by community families.
Moray
Circular terraces with no documents explaining them; the agricultural-laboratory theory is the most widely accepted, and the guide discusses it on the amphitheatre's rim.
Ollantaytambo
A royal estate, an unfinished temple and, in 1536, a fortress of Inca resistance against the Spanish. The only Inca town still lived in with its original layout.
Pisac
Terraces, a religious sector with the Intihuatana and, below, a village with a colonial layout and the market that today brings together the valley's communities.
Urubamba
The valley floor, where lunch is at 12:00: the colonial town grew on farmland that already fed Cusco in Inca times.
After the Incas
The colonial layer and the train
With the conquest came churches on top of temples, grid-planned villages and haciendas. In the twentieth century, the railway along the valley floor turned Ollantaytambo into the gateway to Machu Picchu: that's why two of our departures end there today at 15:30, a few minutes from the station.
How it's visited today
The geographical order is the order of the history
The Super Sacred Valley starts on the plateau (Chinchero, Maras, Moray), drops to the valley floor (Urubamba, Ollantaytambo) and returns via Pisac; the Traditional does it the other way round. On both routes a certified guide tells at each site what this page summarises. Choose a route →
It's the modern name for the Urubamba river valley between Pisac and Ollantaytambo. For the Incas it was a privileged territory thanks to its milder climate than Cusco, its maize land and its closeness to the capital; there they built royal estates, temples and terraces.
Stepped agricultural terraces on the hillsides, with stone walls and drainage fill. They gained farmland, held heat and prevented erosion. You see them in Pisac, Ollantaytambo, Chinchero and, in circular form, in Moray.
It was a royal estate and, after the Spanish arrived, a stage for Inca resistance: from its terraces the fortress repelled a Spanish attack in 1536. Its town keeps the Inca layout and is still lived in.
They're older: the salt spring has been worked since pre-Inca cultures, and the Incas continued it. Today it's worked by families of the Maras community, who charge the entrance fee.
There are no documents explaining it. The most widely accepted theory is that it was an agricultural experimentation centre: the temperature difference between terraces would have allowed crops to be tested at different altitudes.
Churches built on Inca walls, like Chinchero's, and the layout of towns such as Pisac or Urubamba. At each site the guide shows where the Inca stone ends and the colonial adobe begins.
Yes: all four departures visit the sites in the geographical order that explains the history, with a certified guide telling it at each stop. The full route of 5 sites is the Super Sacred Valley.
Five centuries in one day, tomorrow at 06:20
Book and get the exact pickup time for your Cusco accommodation tonight.