A History of the Inca Empire

Welcome to the biggest online source for history and information on the Inca!

Few of our world's cultures came to such an abrupt and merciless end than that of the Inca people. From birth, through the rise of empire, to their violent subjugation at the hands of the Spanish conquistadores, Inca society as we understand it existed for a mere 400 years or so. Yet in modern times, local farmers and foreign archeologists in Peru began to uncover ruined cities, hidden for centuries by dense vegetation, and the work of building a contemporary history of this lost civilization began to accelerate.

More recently, a boom in tourism has led to further developments in the Inca story: every year thousands of people walk the Inca Trail, part of the vast imperial road system built half a millenium ago. Many more visit Machu Picchu, the famous sprawling mountain-top city rediscovered in 1911, and the nearby city of Cuzco, once the center of a great empire, offers visitors a wealth of historic sites, churches and museums to explore.

This website was put together to try and collect detailed and easily accessible information on the Inca people, including their history, religion and way of life. It also gives an outline of Peru today, hopefully tempting people to go and see this diverse, friendly, culturally and historically rich country for themselves.