Tipón, a royal estate just south of Cuzco, featured elegant terracing and
waterworks. Adriana von Hagen.These rural manifestations were not bounded and contained entities like their
urban counterparts. Instead, they comprised a diversity of site types scattered
across a larger landscape. The functions served by these royal settlements
included ceremonial plazas, ritual shrines, meeting rooms, servant work areas,
agricultural lands and terraces, storehouses, the ruling Inca’s sleeping quarters,
pleasure gardens, hunting lodges, and baths. The classic example is the
magnificent site of Machu Picchu, in the Urubamba valley, northwest of Cuzco.
In sum, the architectural installations of a royal estate were designed to
collectively meet the needs of a temporary capital when the ruler was in
residence.
This dispersed settlement pattern was typical of the Inca state, which placed
discrete imperial installations at critical visual, spatial, and temporal junctures in
order to emphasize the Inca ruler’s authority in the Andes, whether economic,
religious, political, or cultural. Inca roads and way stations carefully monitored
access to these installations, stretching the imperial presence even farther across
the landscape. Hence, royal estates were not diminished by the fact that they
were made up of a series of individual sites laid out across a large landscape. On