Inkaterra La Casona

Colourful parades and ancient Inca ceremonies are re-enacted at this world-famous winter solstice festival.

The Inca empire’s most elaborate sun temple, covered in gold and silver, is now a colonial church housing stunning Inca stonework.

A vast, fortified Inca sun temple that perches over Cusco, housing boulders and masonry astonishingly jigsaw-pieced together, without cement or metal tools.

The heart of the old Inca empire has a wealth of Inca ruins, Spanish treasures and historic architecture to explore.

Located on top of an old Inca palace, this towering 16th-century baroque cathedral took a century to build and is stuffed with countless treasures, including key works from the Cuzco School of art.

This, the shortest and easiest of alternative Inca trails, takes three days from Cusco and offers wonderful mountain views, little-visited Inca sites and a final day at Machu Picchu itself.

This little village in the Sacred Valley near Cusco is a centre for traditional indigenous weaving in Peru. It has a lively market and ancient Inca agricultural terraces.

Looking like bone-white Balinese rice terraces and surrounded by dramatic mountain scenery, these ancient salt pans, cut in Inca times, are still in use today. Accessed from the town of Maras in the Sacred Valley, 40kms from Cusco.

A land of spectacular deserts, high mountains and rainforests that teem with wildlife, Peru is also home to an array of dramatically situated pre-Colombian ruins, including Machu Picchu.