Travel Guide

Throughout time, Cusco has surprised us with architectural wonders, art, history, flavor and tradition. Its squares, ruins and people keep the ancestral customs of the Inca people and all their knowledge about the earth, the stars and what lies between them. Moray is part of that ancestral knowledge and is one of the most visited places by Peruvian and foreign tourists.

Get to know Moray with us, where it is located, its history, what you can see and fill yourself with its energy in an experience you will not forget.

A little about Moray

Moray is an archaeological site located in the district of Maras, in the province of Urubamba in the Sacred Valley of the Incas, within the beautiful Cusco. But the archaeological site is not made up of residential buildings, war fortresses or large warehouses intended to store food for the Inca people, this enclosure was a kind of agricultural laboratory that to this day, surprises experts.

Moray is located at 3500 masl at 7 kilometers from Maras and about 50 kilometers away from the city of Cusco, so it is essential to use land transportation to get there from the Imperial city.

It is a deep construction, circular, concentric and elliptical in shape, with staggered platforms that were used for planting various foods. Between the terraces you can see an irrigation system that supplies the entire area, demonstrating the engineering skills and knowledge of the Incas.

Moray

In the terraces, due to their depth, it was possible to obtain different microclimates, offering ideal spaces for the planting of specific foods, such as corn, potatoes, quinoa, fruits, grains, vegetables, etc. Each certain number of terraces represents a different climate, so it was possible to plant a wide variety of agricultural products in the same place.

Its history
The first inhabitants of this area of the Sacred Valley were the Ayamarca and the Maras. They occupied these lands, some time before the Incas, who conquered all the nearby ethnic groups seeking to build the Tahuantinsuyo Empire.

With the conquest of the Incas, many ancestral knowledge obtained from the subdued cultures, were incorporated to the Empire and its society. It is in this way, that together with the great ceremonial and residential buildings, Moray was built, an important center of control and agricultural exploration, but not necessarily of supply for the population. Even so, it is in Moray where the coca leaf, sacred for the Andean people of all times, was planted and harvested in greater quantities.

Moray

There is not much information about Moray during the time of the Spanish stay in Peru, but only in 1932 during an expedition in the area, the terraces were spotted under the abundant vegetation that had grown for many years.

It was John Earls who established that Moray was a center of agricultural experimentation, based on his studies and research.