Ollantaytambo, 72 km from Cusco, is the one Inca town in the Sacred Valley still arranged on its original grid. The irrigation channels still work. The houses are still inhabited. You can read the 15th century directly off the street plan.
Peruways can set up guided visits to the terraced fortress above the plaza — Pachacuti’s complex, with the unfinished Temple of the Sun as the showpiece. Six monoliths of pink rhyolite were hauled across the valley from a quarry and set in place; the view from Temple Hill opens onto the full Urubamba and the Veronica range.
Down in the town, there’s a weekly market, a cluster of picanterías around the plaza, and the kind of cobbled callejones you can disappear into for an afternoon.
Trains to Aguas Calientes leave from the station several times a day, which makes Ollantaytambo the natural overnight before Machu Picchu. Peruways bundles both legs.
