The Coricancha Becomes the Empire's Golden Temple to the Sun
Sheets of beaten gold, a hollow idol filled with royal ashes, and 41 sacred sightlines radiating from a single courtyard
Quick facts
- Location
- Cuzco
- Primary dedication
- Inti, the sun god
- Gold plates on Temple of the Sun
- Reportedly 700, 2 kg each
- Sacred alignments (ceques)
- 41, linking 328 shrines
What happened
The Coricancha, also called the Golden Enclosure, was Cuzco's central religious complex and the Inca empire's most sacred site, dedicated to Inti the sun god along with the creator god Viracocha and the moon goddess Quilla. Its construction is generally credited to Pachacuti, who rebuilt an older, pre-imperial shrine on the site into a stone complex whose interior and exterior walls were covered with gold sheets, reportedly 700 plates half a meter square and 2 kilograms each, on the Temple of the Sun alone. Inside stood a gold statue of Inti called Punchao, shown as a small seated boy with a hollow torso used to store the cremated organs of dead Inca rulers; it was carried outside each morning and returned to its shrine at night. From the complex radiated 41 sacred alignments called ceques linking 328 shrines across the region, and conquered peoples' captured religious relics were stored here, functioning as a kind of hostage collection that enforced compliance with Inca rule.
Why it matters
The Coricancha made Cuzco's religious authority physically visible to the entire empire and gave the Inca state a mechanism, holding rival peoples' sacred objects hostage, for extending control beyond military force. Its gold is also why the temple did not survive the conquest: Spanish accounts describe its stripping and melting down after the fall of Cuzco in 1533.
How we know
Archaeological excavation confirms extensive pre-Inca structures beneath the site, though World History Encyclopedia notes the exact building chronology remains unclear; descriptions of the gold cladding and the Punchao idol come from Spanish eyewitness accounts recorded shortly after the conquest, before the temple was stripped.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Coricancha · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Inca Civilization · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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