History & Culture in Cajamarca
Three thousand years in one valley, from a canal cut through rock to the carnival that still shuts the city down.
The story of the valley
Walk through the
centuries that shaped Cajamarca
Three thousand years sit inside one valley: a canal cut through rock, a cliff full of tombs, the room where an empire was ransomed, and a carnival that still shuts the city down every February. Click a photograph to the side to bring it to the middle, and click the middle one to read it here.
c. 1100 BC
The gold of Cuntur Wasi
The oldest story in the region is told on a hilltop above the Jequetepeque valley, four hours west of the city. Cuntur Wasi was a ceremonial centre built in stone terraces and rebuilt at least three times as the people using it changed. Japanese and Peruvian archaeologists excavating there in the late 1980s reached tombs holding gold crowns, ear ornaments and pectorals, worked with a confidence that pushed the known start of Andean goldsmithing back by centuries. The finds are kept at the small site museum, a few metres from the ground they came out of.
Carved monolith on the terraces of Cuntur Wasi. Photo by Pitxiquin, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
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Plan the visit
See Cuntur Wasi for yourself
Every period on this page is still standing somewhere in the valley. Check what is running, compare tours and tickets, and find a place to stay while you are here.
Three Thousand Years in the Valley
What happened here, in the order it happened.
Four moments, three thousand years apart, all inside the same valley: a canal cut through solid rock, a cliff face full of tombs, the room where an empire was ransomed, and the working highland capital that stands here today.
Pick a year to jump to it, or scroll down and take them in order.
Cumbemayo Is Carved
Pre-Inca engineers cut a water channel through solid volcanic rock in the highlands above the valley, complete with right-angled turns thought to slow the current. It still carries water along its original course.
The Ventanillas Necropolis
Window-like burial niches are cut in tiers into a cliff face at Otuzco, forming one of the largest pre-Inca cemeteries in the northern Andes.
Atahualpa and the Ransom Room
The Inca ruler Atahualpa was captured in Cajamarca and held in a stone room he offered to fill with gold and silver in exchange for his freedom. The Cuarto del Rescate is the only Inca structure still standing in the city.
A Working Highland Capital
Cajamarca is the capital of its region: a dairy and mining centre with a university, a colonial core, and thermal baths still fed by the same geothermal source the Inca used.