We hope you enjoy Descendants of the Incas. The images and comments you explore will give you a flavor of the rich culture of Inca people living today near the city of Cusco, once the capital of the Inca empire.

Descendants of the Incas fulfills one of the goals of the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco, Peru: to share information with you and others about the Native American culture of the Andes.

The Center's overall purpose is to help preserve and celebrate Andean textiles and assist their makers in carrying on a tradition practiced for more than 2000 years.

Over the past decade, the Center has grown tremendously. Now working with over ten outlying villages, it is housed at a building located in central Cusco  at Av. Del sol 603--adjacent to the ruins of the Temple of the Sun.

If you visit Cusco, include a visit to the Center with its permanent exhibition, “Weaving Lives,” with related information on traditional textiles and patterns, demonstrations by weavers representing the villages, and a fine museum shop.

The Center is fortunate in having Nilda Callañaupa, who now lives in Cusco, Peru, to serve as Director and President.

Nilda grew up in the high village of Chinchero, an important Inca center where, in the sixteenth century, the Emperor Tupa Inca built his country estate, a palace, temple, ceremonial spaces, terraces and royal storehouses.

Chinchero also served as a tambo or resting place on the Inca Royal Road. Machu Picchu, the so-called "lost city of the Incas," not far from Chinchero, is thought to have served as one of the next tambos on the Inca Road.

A Message from Nilda Callañaupa,

A Peruvian Family

The Community of Chinchero

Inca Ruins, Chinchero

Making and Dyeing Yarn

Weavers and Their Looms

Chinchero Weavings

Learning To Weave

Patterns of Chinchero