Give the first day to the centre and to the altitude: the Plaza de Armas, the cathedral, the Inca wall on Hatunrumiyoc, then the climb into San Blas and nothing more strenuous. Day two goes up to Sacsayhuamán and back down past Q'enqo, with Qorikancha in the afternoon. Keep day three for the Sacred Valley and day four for Machu Picchu, whose tickets come from the Ministry of Culture and sell out.
Cusco was the capital of Tawantinsuyu, and it has never stopped being a capital of something. The Spanish built their churches directly on top of the temples, which is why almost every colonial wall in the centre stands on Inca masonry that outlasted it. Come for Machu Picchu; the city is the better half.
Three tiers of zigzag walls above the city, built from limestone blocks that run past a hundred tonnes and fitted without mortar so tightly the joints still refuse a blade. What survives is a fraction: the Spanish quarried it for the colonial city, taking the smaller stones and leaving what nobody could move.
The Temple of the Sun was the richest building in the Inca empire, its walls sheeted in gold the Spanish stripped within months. The Dominicans began their convent on the foundations in 1538. The 1950 earthquake made the argument: the colonial fabric cracked and the Inca masonry did not move.
The cathedral went up on the palace of Inca Wiracocha, using stone carted down from Sacsayhuamán, and took a century to finish. Two things earn the ticket: the Señor de los Temblores, the blackened Christ credited with stopping the 1650 earthquake, and Marcos Zapata's 1753 Last Supper, in which the dish on the table is a guinea pig.
Opened in 2003 in the Casa Cabrera, MAP shows around 450 pieces from the Larco collection and hangs them as art rather than archaeology: dark rooms, single objects lit alone, wall texts quoting writers instead of excavation reports. The best single hour of context in the city, with a good restaurant in the courtyard.
The artisans' quarter climbs the hill straight out of the centre, steeply enough at this altitude to be a morning rather than a detour. Workshops sit in courtyards off lanes too narrow for cars. The adobe church at the top has a pulpit carved from a single cedar trunk, among the finest woodwork in the Americas.
The covered market is where the city buys its food and where you should buy your lunch. The juice row comes first, stacked with fruit most visitors cannot name, and the counters behind serve caldo de gallina and a set menu for a few soles. Loud, unstaged, and the fastest way to understand what Cusco eats.
The Jesuits built on the palace of Huayna Capac and rebuilt after the 1650 earthquake, finishing in 1668. The facade was so obviously grander than the cathedral opposite that the argument reached Rome. The Jesuits won: this is the church people photograph. The choir balcony gives you the plaza from above.
Hiram Bingham shipped thousands of objects from Machu Picchu to Yale in 1912, and Peru spent most of a century asking for them back. What is on the shelves is deliberately unspectacular: cooking pots, bronze pins, bones. That is what makes it useful, because it turns a famous silhouette into a place where people worked.
A non-profit founded in 1996 by Andean weavers, working with ten highland communities to keep techniques alive that were within a generation of being lost. Weavers work in the shop, so you can watch a piece being made before you buy one. Prices are above the plaza stalls, because the weaver is named and paid.
The street name means great stone, and the wall on its northern side is the surviving flank of the palace of Inca Roca. One block has been cut with twelve angles to meet its neighbours exactly. The stone is worth two minutes; the wall is worth ten, because the joints away from the famous block are just as fine.
A glass box in the courtyard of the Museo de Arte Precolombino, with a short menu of alpaca, trout and Andean tubers. The kitchen does not coast on it.
A courtyard grill opposite the San Blas church, cooking Cusqueñan classics over wood. This is where people book to try cuy al horno, ordered ahead.
Alpaca, beef and fish brought to the table on volcanic stone hot enough to finish the cooking in front of you. The sauces beat the format.
A limestone outcrop carved into channels, steps and an underground chamber with an altar cut from the rock. It sits on the road down from Sacsayhuamán.
Red stone walls on the Chinchero road, read as a control point and staging post rather than a fort. Best combined with Tambomachay nearby.
A three-tiered spring shrine where the water still runs through the original Inca channels and falls at the same rate from both spouts. The engineering is the exhibit.
Terraces and stone canals in the South Valley that still carry a spring through a full irrigation system. The clearest demonstration of Inca hydraulics near the city.
Not Inca at all: a Wari city of gridded compounds and long straight streets, built centuries before Cusco became a capital. The fastest correction to that idea.
In the Casa Garcilaso, the family home of the chronicler Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, running from pre-ceramic tools to the republic.
Five rooms under the garden below the temple, holding pre-Inca, Inca and colonial material from the 1990s excavations. On the Boleto Turístico.
Cusco School painting in the Archbishop's Palace, the building standing on the Inca wall everyone photographs. Covered by the religious circuit ticket.
Contemporary work by Cusqueñan artists in the town hall on the Plaza Regocijo. A reminder that the city did not stop making art in 1750.
Cacao from bean to bar, with workshops where you roast and grind your own. Free to walk through, and the obvious hour with children.
The route people take when the Inca Trail permits have gone, and no consolation prize: a 4,630 m pass, then a long descent into cloud forest and coffee country.
Lower, warmer and far less trafficked, through Quechua weaving villages and past hot springs. Choose it if the people interest you more than the passes.
Machu Picchu's sister site, still reachable only on foot and only partly cleared, so the terraces are largely yours. Four to five days from the Cachora trailhead.
A circuit of the 6,384 m apu south-east of the city, almost entirely above 4,500 m, past glacial lakes and herding settlements. The highest and coldest of the five.
The neighbourhood market halfway up the hill: produce, bread, and counters doing set lunches for a few soles. Crossed in five minutes.
Where Cusco does its weekly shop, east of the centre and free of souvenir stalls. Go for the fruit you cannot identify and the cheese from the high pastures.
Several hundred craft stalls under one roof at the bottom of Avenida El Sol, selling the same alpaca and textiles as the plaza at lower prices.
The biggest produce market in the region, twenty minutes east in San Jerónimo, where the valley's growers sell to the city. Busiest in the morning.
The Plaza de Armas and the grid around it, where Inca walls carry colonial arcades and almost everything here is fifteen minutes on foot. Also the loudest place to sleep.
Steep lanes, workshops and the best small hotels, ten minutes above the plaza and quieter for it. Every arrival is a climb at 3,400 m.
The terrace above the plaza on the way up to Sacsayhuamán, with the Colcampata wall and the first proper view of the roofs. A hard walk home.
Working Cusco west of the centre, around the Belén market and the Almudena cemetery. Prices and menus are set for people who live here.
The modern district south-east of the old town: flat streets, the everyday market, and restaurants not priced for the plaza. Twenty minutes on foot.
Terraces stacked up the ridge above the town, with tombs cut into the cliff opposite and a craft market below. Best walked downhill from the top gate.
The only Inca town still lived in on its original grid, with water running in the street channels under a temple hill of unfinished stonework.
Thousands of salt pans worked by the same families since before the Inca, and half an hour away the concentric terraces of Moray, each ring a microclimate.
A pre-dawn start, three hours to Soraypampa, then a steep climb to a glacial lake at around 4,200 m. Not for your second day in Peru.
The striped ridge at 5,036 m. The colours are real, mineral layers exposed by retreating ice, and so is the altitude. Clearest between May and September.
Water, foam and paint across the Plaza de Armas for several Sundays, peaking before Lent. No bag you own is safe.
The blackened Christ leaves the cathedral on Holy Monday under a shower of red ñucchu flowers. The oldest procession here.
A pilgrimage of tens of thousands to the Sinakara sanctuary above 4,600 m, before Corpus Christi. Cold and genuinely religious.
Fifteen saints and virgins are carried into the cathedral and paraded around the plaza. The dish of the day is chiriuchu.
The festival of the sun, staged in three acts at Qorikancha, the plaza and Sacsayhuamán. The busiest day of the Cusco year.
Four days of masked dance in a small town four hours east, one of the most striking festivals in the Andes. Beds are scarce.
A reconstruction of the Inca coming-of-age rite, staged at Sacsayhuamán by local schools. Free to watch from the slope.
One of the largest craft fairs in the Americas fills the plaza on Christmas Eve, selling nativity figures until midnight mass.
The airport sits inside the city, about 5 km from the Plaza de Armas. It has no night operations, which is why almost every Lima flight leaves in the morning.
PeruRail and Inca Rail both run the line down the Urubamba to Aguas Calientes. Most departures leave from Ollantaytambo. Book ahead between May and September.
Shared colectivos are how the Sacred Valley travels: Urubamba and Ollantaytambo from Calle Pavitos, Pisac from Puputi, going when full rather than to a timetable.
The historic centre is walkable and almost entirely cobbled, and every walk is uphill in one direction. Taxis are unmetered, so agree the fare before you get in.
A cob of giant white Cusco maize with a slab of fresh cheese. The kernels are the size of a thumbnail.
Fermented maize beer, sold from picanterías flying a red flag. Cloudy, slightly sour and low in alcohol.
The dish of Corpus Christi and only eaten then: cold cuy, chicken, sausage, cheese, seaweed and roe.
Roast guinea pig, the Andean festival meat, served whole and eaten with the hands. Order it the night before.
Pork shoulder marinated overnight in chicha de jora, stewed slowly and eaten for breakfast on Sunday.
Pork boiled in its own fat until it crisps, with mint, mote and fried potato. Saylla is the town for it.
Wild mushrooms picked after the first rains, cooked with broad beans, milk, cheese and potato.
Grilled trout from the highland lakes and the Urubamba, usually with mote and salad. The safest valley order.
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