Huaca Pucllana

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As far as Lima’s inhabitants are concerned, Miraflores is the major focus of the city’s action and nightlife, its streets lined with cafés and the capital’s flashiest shops. A good place to make for first is the Huaca Pucllana, a temple, pre-Columbian tomb and administrative centre in the middle of suburban Miraflores. This vast pre-Inca adobe mound continues to dwarf most of the houses around and has a small site museum, craft shop and very good restaurant (see Miraflores). From the top of the huaca you can see over the office buildings and across the flat roofs of the multicoloured houses in the heart of Miraflores.

The oracular origins of the Huaca Pucllana

One of a large number of huacas and palaces that formerly stretched across this part of the valley, little is known about the Huaca Pucllana, though it seems likely that it was originally named after a pre-Inca chief of the area. It has a hollow core running through its cross section and is believed to have been constructed in the shape of an enormous frog, symbol of the rain god, who spoke to priests through a tube connected to the cavern at its heart. This site may well have been the mysteriously unknown oracle after which the Rimac (meaning “he who speaks”) Valley was named; a curious document from 1560 affirms that the “devil” spoke at this mound.

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Keith Drew

written by
Keith Drew

updated 26.04.2021

A former Rough Guides Managing Editor, Keith Drew has written or updated over a dozen Rough Guides, including Costa Rica, Japan and Morocco. As well as writing for The Telegraph, The Guardian and BRITAIN Magazine, among others, he also runs family-travel website Lijoma.com. Follow him @keithdrewtravel on Twitter and @BigTrips4LittleTravellers on Instagram.

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