The conformation of the urban form in the historical nucleus of the Cuzco city: exegesis of Spanish-Andean syncretism

Abstract

The study analyses the process of urban form transformation of the historical center of Cuzco city under the hypothesis that this form is the result of a singular Hispano-Andean syncretism of great significance and values, which transcends the merely monumental. For this purpose, historiographic methods and sources have been used, through which morphogenetic processes are deployed in a diachronic scheme that focuses on three moments that constitute singularities within the apparent linearity of the post-Inca transformation, and which coincide with the periods of the Viceroyalty (colony), the Republic (nineteenth-century liberalism) and Modernity (twentieth century). From this analysis, it is concluded that the urban form at the founding moment, characterized by a certain anthropic balance between the natural and built landscape, was gradually diluted to be transmuted into an eminently architectural urbanism, with a prevalence of the built form; Nevertheless, suggestive and singular persistencies can be traced, sedimented in a sort of valuable urban palimpsest that allows to interpret, as exegesis or hermeneutics, a Hispanic-Andean syncretism characteristic of one of the most representative cities of Peru and traceable in other Hispanic-Andean cities. To do this, four categories of analysis have been used, from which a partially unprecedented urban culture has become visible, and which can serve as a source of reorientation of ongoing urban processes.