Ollantaytambo is the one Inca town in the Sacred Valley still laid out on its original 15th-century grid. The irrigation channels run down the cobbled streets, the houses still have Inca stone foundations under their adobe walls, and the whole place feels like a town that forgot to modernise rather than one being preserved for tourists.
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 main feature. Six monoliths of pink rhyolite hauled across the valley sit in place where the Spanish Conquest interrupted construction. From Temple Hill the view opens onto the full Urubamba valley and the Veronica range.
In town, there’s a weekly market, a handful of picanterías around the plaza, and the kind of narrow 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.
