Chroniclers describe Cusco as having been laid out in the shape of a puma, with the Qorikancha at its centre and a fortress for a head.
A city shaped like an animal
Colonial-era Spanish chroniclers, drawing on accounts from Inca informants, described Cusco's plan as following the outline of a puma, with the hilltop complex of Sacsayhuaman forming the head or crown and the confluence of two rivers marking the tail. Modern archaeologists treat the puma-city description with some caution, since it survives mainly through chroniclers writing after the conquest, but the deliberate ceremonial layout of the Inca capital, radiating ritual sightlines called ceques outward from the Qorikancha, is well attested independently.
A garden that was not planted
Spanish accounts describe a garden within the Qorikancha precinct containing life-size representations of maize plants, animals and figures cast in gold and silver rather than grown or carved from stone, a display of the empire's wealth built entirely from precious metal. Conquistadors stripped the temple's gold sheet cladding and melted down much of this garden for bullion within years of their arrival, so almost none of it survives to be examined directly.
What is left to see
The stonework of the Qorikancha's curved wall, too finely fitted for Spanish builders to demolish, still forms the base of the colonial church of Santo Domingo raised directly on top of it, the clearest physical trace left of what the garden once surrounded.