Cusco Cathedral — officially the Basilica Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin — occupies the north side of Plaza de Armas, built between 1560 and 1654 on the Inca palace of Viracocha. The granite walls were hauled down from the Sacsayhuamán fortress above the city.
The main retablo was the most expensive altarpiece in colonial South America — carved cedar covered in silver from Potosí. The chapels around the three naves hold work from the Cusqueña school, the Andean painting tradition that took Spanish religious iconography and quietly subverted it. The famous “Last Supper” by Marcos Zapata (1753) has a guinea pig on the plate and Pizarro’s features on Judas.
The attached museum covers colonial religious painting, with sections of exposed Inca stonework under the floor. Peruways includes the cathedral in its Cusco walking tour, which also covers Qorikancha, the 12-angled stone and the San Blas district.
