THE CORICANCHA.

The religious complex of Coricancha was built as the crown jewel of beauty in the Inca capital city of Cuzco. It is situated at 11,150 feet above sea level in South East Peru.
Coricancha was the most sacred site in Inca religion and considered the very centre of the Inca world. The site was also known as "the Golden Enclosure" and was dedicated to the highest god, Viracocha the Creator god.
In the shadows of the Peruvian Andes, with thin air, rocky slopes, that wouldn't seem to be a likely place for the center of Inca doctrine, the Coricancha cemented the symbolic importance of religion in the task of uniting the divergent cultural practices. Anyone seeking to thrive under these conditions would need to be equipped with a tremendous capacity of success. The Incas had this capacity in abundance, and were able to tame the harsh landscapes to create the largest empire in South America before the arrival of the Europeans.
When the Inca Pachacutec, the 9th ruler, assumed the Inca throne, he began to reform the city capital of Cuzco by restructuring the street grid, which remains to this day. The construction of the complex is attributed to him. During his reign a massive conquests was made and the Inca empire went on to control an area extending from modern-day Colombia to Santiago, Chile.
The city capital, Cuzco, itself was deliberately laid out to represent a puma, and the Coricancha located in the animal's tail, was considered the holiest site of all. In typical Inca symmetry the second most important sacred site in the city was the fortress of Sacsay-Huaman, located at the head of the puma. The effective organization of the city played a large part in Pachacutec success. The lay-out of the site, as seen from above, resembled a sun with rays shining out in all directions. These were the sacred cosmic roads (ceques) of which 41 of them led to an impressive 328 sacred sites. The complex was also built where the city's two great rivers of Huantanay and Tulla-Mayo met.
The Coricancha was constructed using the Inca's distinctive masonry style. The massive walls of the complex were built from large stone blocks finely cut and fitted together without mortar. The large curved Western wall is particularly noted for its form and elegant, regular masonry. Most walls also leaned slightly inwards as they rose in height. Many trapezoid doorways and windows allowed access and light to enter the interior spaces and a broad band of gold was added mid-way height around the walls.
The interior buildings were of one floor and had thatched roofs. It consisted of 4 main chambers, each connected to a different entity: moon, stars, thunder, and rainbows. The doors were covered in gold sheets, as were the interiors and exteriors and the inner side of the perimeter wall that was even said to have been studded with precious stones especially emeralds. Almost all was filled with a great quantity of gold, with one chamber containing a giant sun disc, reflecting the sunlight that illuminated the rest of the temple. The disc was aligned so that during the summer solstice it illuminated a sacred space where only the emperor himself was allowed to enter and sit in there.
The location of the temple within the city was very important. It was placed at the convergence of the 4 main highways and connected to the 4 cardinal points of the empire through the 4 quarters that formed the body of the land named "Tahuantinsuyo," meaning 'the land of the 4 quarters."
The Coricancha housed more than 4,000 priests, and the position of the temple in relation to the nearby Andean mountains meant that the temple functioned as an enormous calendar. Shadows were cast by stones, placed on the foothills of the temple, marking out the solstice and equinoxes. The observation marked a very important religious celebration.
When the Europeans arrived, after taking Cuzco, and declaring the city their  center of operations, they demolished most of the upper part of Coricancha melting down its gold plating and its sculptures sent back to Europe. The Europeans then, using the same stone foundations, built a cathedral on the site. Centuries later, an earthquake in 1950 completely destroyed the cathedral but left the stone foundations of the temple intact. The cathedral has been rebuilt since then on top of the same Inca foundation and while visitors are prohibited from climbing on the original temple walls, they have the freedom to roam on the grounds of the temple site. The golden sun disk has been replaced by sunbathers.
Today, Coricancha still has an important place in the city, however, modern Cuzco has expanded greatly so that the original puma design in nearly impossible to make out.
The clever design of the Coricancha golden temple is the centre-piece of an empire that revolutionized city planning in South America.