Korikancha and Santo Domingo, Cuzco, Cloister

1450-1675

Name(s) currently unknown

Cuzco, PER

This interior courtyard of a large monastery where Dominican friars lived and worked, was built on the Korikancha, a sacred Inka site in Cuzco, Peru.

The complex was built in phases. Fine ashlar masonry dates to its pre-Hispanic phase, and the rougher masonry and plaster walls visible here to its colonial phases, although the Dominicans reused the dressed stones of the Inka complex in their later construction. They employed standard monastic models in creating an arcaded passageway around the patio. This arcade, with its 1 to 2 proportions between bottom and top, is particularly graceful. Large oil paintings are mounted on interior walls, which afforded the space for long narratives, Here, they depict the life of Saint Dominic, the order’s founder. The slightly squat proportions of the tower that rises above the cloister are appropriate for this seismically active region.

Inka rulers of Cuzco built the Korikancha in the 15th century to hold holy relics and house religious festivals. After the conquest, the site was taken over by the Dominicans, one of the religious orders entrusted with evangelization of the Andes. They rebuilt the building many times; this version dates mostly to after the earthquake of 1650. A 1950 earthquake destroyed much of Santo Domingo, and revealed the extensive reuse of Inka parts of the building. In recent years, archeologists have worked to strip away the colonial layers to reveal Inka buildings, largely intact, within the compound.

The Inka Korikancha originally comprised long halls (called “kanchas”) made of finely worked stone set on the four sides of a central courtyard. The Dominican friars who occupied the site after the conquest found they could modify these Inka buildings to fit the standard monastic plan of long galleries around a patio.

The building sits on an escarpment above the Saphi river, offering a dramatic sight from below. Korikancha would have been one of first sacred Inka buildings that travelers would encounter coming to Cuzco along the ancient road from Collasuyo, the southern reaches of the empire. This is still a main artery into the city, and the encounter with Santo Domingo still striking.

The reuse of building materials was common practice and the buildings of Inka Cuzco proved particularly adaptable to Spanish tastes and traditions. They offered enclosed spaces of exquisitely finished masonry, built to withstand earthquakes. Inka walls are still in use today. But because Spaniards were key patrons in post-conquest Cuzco, their architectural ideologies often dominated. Thus, they could treat the architectural mixing at places like Santo Domingo as a practical matter, finding in Inka masonry their buildings enveloped solid foundations rather than refined aesthetic systems.

Barbara E. Mundy

Dana Leibsohn and Barbara E. Mundy.
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. http://www.fordham.edu/vistas, 2015.

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