Tipón

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Water in the canals

Tipón is a landscape of ruins near Oropesa , a few kilometers east of Cusco , Peru . The ruins at an altitude of around 3450 meters consist of gardens and temples and date from the Inca period . The excellently preserved, wide terraces are made of red stone. There are exactly twelve terraces, which symbolize the twelve months of the year. A few ruins have been excavated next to the terraces, but many are still in the ground and can only be guessed at. The numerous irrigation terraces and the decorative waterfalls connecting them are particularly striking . A special place is one of the springs that the system could feed, where the water was divided into different channels and brought back together. The whole system is considered an engineering masterpiece of the Incas. As a special feature, the terraces are built in a straight line and do not follow the terrain. It is therefore believed that the production of the place had been used for special ceremonies.

To the north of the terraces is a system on a hill, which has its own water pipe that brought the water from around 1.2 kilometers away. The line is in operation, albeit no longer in full length (that is, no longer from the original source). So far, the second site, presumably known as “Pucara de Tipon”, which is almost as large as the Tipon facility and is located north of the aforementioned aqueduct, i.e. just under 1.5 km north of Tipon, has been completely ignored by tourists. The aqueduct and the northern facility with around 24 terrace steps can be easily seen on Google Maps (satellite) (just click on the coordinates in the title of the article and select maps and satellite). This aerial photo also shows that the entire area between the two plants is terraced.

Tipón was included in the List of International Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2006.

The tourist boom is still ahead of the complex, as an asphalt road was only built in 2012. As an alternative, the Camino Inca can still be used as the original access, it turns well signposted in a bend in the asphalt road to below 3300 meters and leads up to the complex in wide stairs.

Overview of terraces

Web links

Commons : Tipón  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ^ Dilwyn Jenkins: The Rough Guide to Peru Rough Guides, 2003 ISBN 1-84353-074-0 pp. 187-188
  2. ↑ Kenneth R. Wright et al .: Tipon: Water Engineering Masterpiece of the Inca Empire. 2006, ISBN 0-7844-0851-3 .

Coordinates: 13 ° 34 ′ 15 ″  S , 71 ° 46 ′ 59 ″  W.