We used part of our second day in La Paz to do a tour of nearby Tiwanaku ruins. Tiwanaku (alternatively spelled “Tihuanaco”) is a pre-Inca ceremonial center which in many ways served as a pre-cursor to the Inca empire. More precisely, the Tiwanaku culture (200-1100 C.E.) centered around lake Titicaca, provided strong influence for the later northern Wari state (500-1200 C.E.). The Wari state later fractured into a multitude of warring domains and remained divided until one of those domains – Cusco – united all the Wari and Tiwanaku domains into the Inca empire (“Tahuantinsuyu”) in the 15th century C.E.

Unlike many of the ruins in Peru, Tiwanaku is in somewhat sad state even though much work has been done over the past 4 years to remedy this. This is now a covered museum where many of the exhibits are being moved, and two of the 3 temples seem to be fully excavated. The third and largest one is still just a hill.

The three temples of Tiwanaku are supposed to represent the celestial world (hananpacha), surface world (kaypacha) and underground world (ukupacha). Consequently, one of them is a pyramid (now just a hill), another one is raised about 3 meters above the surface, and another one is sunk lower than ground level.