EventCusco, Peru
Inti Raymi: Cusco's Festival of the Sun
The winter solstice, as the Incas celebrated it
Every 24 June Cusco re-enacts the Inca festival of the sun at Qorikancha, the Plaza de Armas and Sacsayhuamán. How to see it and how to combine it with a trek.
The sun returns
Inti Raymi was the most important ceremony of the Inca calendar, held at the June solstice to call the sun back as the days began to lengthen. The Spanish banned it in 1572; it was revived as a theatrical re-enactment in 1944 and is now the second-largest festival in South America.
The day unfolds in three acts. In the morning the Sapa Inca, played by a Cusqueño actor chosen each year, greets the sun at Qorikancha, the Temple of the Sun, which now lies beneath the Santo Domingo convent. At midday the procession reaches the Plaza de Armas. In the afternoon, on the esplanade of Sacsayhuamán above the city, hundreds of performers in Inca costume re-create the ceremony in Quechua, before a crowd of tens of thousands.
Seats in the stands at Sacsayhuamán are expensive and sell out, but the hills around the esplanade are free and give a fine, if distant, view. The whole of June in Cusco is a festival, with parades almost every day leading up to the 24th.
Planning around it
- Book Cusco hotels and Inca Trail permits for late June early: it is the busiest week of the year
- Arrive by the 20th to see the build-up and acclimatise
- Start your trek on the 25th, when the trails are quieter
Sacsayhuamán
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Mateo QuispeAuthor
Andes TrailsPublisher
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