Cusco

Why Cusco is inca stone grey

Cusco, at about 3,400 metres in the Peruvian Andes, was the capital of the Inca empire. Inca walls of dark grey stone, cut to fit without mortar, still form the base of many streets; the Spanish built white-plastered houses with red tile roofs and blue wooden balconies on top of them. Colour comes from cloth. Weavers of the region dye alpaca and sheep's wool with cochineal for reds and pinks, indigo for blue and local plants for yellow and green. The city also flies a flag of seven horizontal stripes in rainbow colours. It was adopted in 1978 and is often linked with the Incas, though historians find no evidence that they used such a flag.