Cusco, also spelled Cuzco, is a department and region in Peru and is the fourth largest department in the country, after Madre de Dios, Ucayali, and Loreto. It borders the departments of Ucayali on the north; Madre de Dios and Puno on the east; Arequipa on the south; and Apurímac, Ayacucho and Junín on the west. Its capital is Cusco, the historical capital of the Inca Empire.
Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Inca
Political division of the Cusco Region
Balconies and arcades at the main square in Cusco
Quechua, also called Runasimi in Southern Quechua, is an indigenous language family that originated in central Peru and thereafter spread to other countries of the Andes. Derived from a common ancestral "Proto-Quechua" language, it is today the most widely spoken pre-Columbian language family of the Americas, with the number of speakers estimated at 8–10 million speakers in 2004, and just under 7 million from the most recent census data available up to 2011. Approximately 13.9% of Peruvians speak a Quechua language.
The vocabulary of the general language of the Indians of Peru, called Quichua (1560). From Domingo de Santo Tomás the first writer in Quechua.
Act of Argentine Independence, written in Spanish and Quechua (1816)
