Pisac

Pisac, also written Písac, is a town in the Sacred Valley of the Incas in the Cusco Region of Peru, in the province of Calca. It is situated on the Urubamba River, about 32 kilometres northeast of Cusco, at an altitude of roughly 2,972 metres. The town is best known for two things: the large Inca complex on the mountain ridge above it, a citadel, royal residence, observatory and religious site that scholars generally attribute to the emperor Pachacuti in the fifteenth century, and a market that draws heavy tourist traffic and is at its biggest on Sundays, when Quechua communities from the surrounding area come to sell produce. The present town was built in the valley below the ruins by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo during the 1570s and is laid out on a grid around the Plaza Constitución. Visitors also come for a community museum, a church built on Inca foundations, and a botanic garden created in 1917.