Cajamarca
— — the room where an empire changed hands.
Not only on a wall.
“A high colonial city in a green valley at 2,750 metres, ringed by dairy pasture and eucalyptus. The Cuarto del Rescate still stands a block from the main square, the single Inca room left from the day Atahualpa was held for a ransom of gold. In February the city throws the loudest Carnival in Peru. The rest of the year it is quiet, and the light is cold and clear. from the studio
Cajamarca, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Cajamarca is the capital of the Cajamarca Region, a colonial city of about 280,000 people set in a fertile Andean valley at 2,750 metres. It lies in northern Peru, roughly 850 kilometres north of Lima and a day's drive inland from the Pacific at Pacasmayo. The valley is dairy country: the region produces a large share of Peru's fresh milk, butter, and queso mantecoso. Above the city, the Yanacocha gold mine — one of the largest in South America — sits in the páramo at over 4,000 metres. The Plaza de Armas, anchored by the seventeenth-century cathedral and the church of San Francisco, holds the historic centre together.
Cajamarca's calendar turns on two dates. November 16, 1532, is the day Francisco Pizarro captured the Inca Atahualpa in the main square, a moment that ended the Inca state and reshaped the continent. The other is Carnaval, held in the days before Ash Wednesday and widely regarded as Peru's most extravagant — five days of unsh, water fights, painted faces, brass bands, and the cortejo of the Ño Carnavalón. Outside Carnival, the city is quiet, agrarian, and high-altitude cold at night. Holy Week and the September Fiesta de la Virgen de la Natividad in nearby Cajabamba draw smaller crowds.
Most visitors fly into Mayor General FAP Armando Revoredo Iglesias Airport, a one-hour-twenty-minute flight from Lima, or take an overnight bus. The Cuarto del Rescate, the only Inca-era structure left standing in the city, sits one block from the Plaza de Armas and is open Tuesday through Sunday. Six kilometres east, the Baños del Inca thermal complex — where Atahualpa was bathing when Pizarro arrived — still feeds public and private pools from springs at around 72°C. The colonial centre is walkable; the high pasture and Cumbemayo's pre-Inca aqueduct require a guide and a half-day.