Huaca Huallamarca

A stepped adobe pyramid about 19 metres tall, three levels high, standing alone among the apartment blocks of San Isidro. Its builders used only tiny handmade adobes shaped like molars, unlike the rectangular bricks of the other huacas in the valley. It went up as a ceremonial platform around 200 BC to AD 200, served as a cemetery from about 900 to 1300, and was a public building under the Inca.

The ramp you walk up is modern. It covers the hole left when the mound was quarried for building earth in the early 1900s; in 1941 the district council started to demolish it, until the national archaeology board stepped in. The small site museum shows textiles, pottery and remains from the burials found on and around it. It opens Tuesday to Saturday and the first Sunday of each month.