QHAPAQ ÑAN
La grande strada Inca
Until June 20th, 2021
Free admission
Upon his arrival in Peru, the Spanish chronicler Pedro Cieza de León writes with great admiration that the local roads “surpassed the Roman ones and the one that Hannibal had built in the Alps”. He was referring to the great boulevard system built by the Incas to move men and goods across their vast empire, extending from Ecuador to the north of Chile and Argentina.
The exhibition “Qhapaq Ñan. The great Inca road “, curated by Carolina Orsini, curator of the archaeological and ethnographic collections of the Museum of Cultures, will be an opportunity to show the Inca heritage of the museum and to bring to the attention of the public the latest discoveries of the MUDEC staff made during the survey and excavation works in a post station along the Inca Trail in northwestern Argentina.
The exhibition consists of seven sections: the first deals with the Inca world and the historical trajectory of the “sons of the Sun”; the second explores the diversity of the vast Andean territory, made up of different ecological bands: from the desert coast to the Andes, from the mountain forest to the great Amazonian jungle. The third section, on the other hand, is dedicated to the civilizations that preceded the Inca empire, complex cultures capable of building huge urban agglomerations since the third millennium before Christ.
The route continues with the following sections, based on the description of the caminos de llanos (lowland) and the caminos de sierra, as well as the many ancillary structures such as the post stations (the tambos and chasquiwasi) and the famous suspension bridges. In addition, the Qhapaq Ñan will be illustrated as the glue of a vast and varied empire, in which connections were essential for controlling the population, moving armies and collecting taxes in the form of voluntary work shifts. Still used in modern times, the great Inca road is still a bursting element in the Andean landscape. The final section of the exhibition will present a video installation that will return in three-dimensional form the Inca evidence mapped by the MUDEC staff of a chasquiwasi in Molinos (Salta, Argentina), in use until modern times. On display are about 100 Andean archaeological finds selected from the pre-Hispanic-Amerindian collections of the Museum, as well as a rich explanatory apparatus composed of texts and maps.
Khipu Peru, Northern coast (?) Inca culture, 1st cent. XV / XVI Raw and yarn-dyed and twisted cotton, knotting [PAM 01326
Fragment of a female cloak with geometric polychrome decorations (detail) Peru, Arequipa Department Inca culture / Chuquibamba, sec. XV / XVI Camelid wool (weft face tapestry) Coll. Mazzoleni – Museum of Cultures, Milan [PAM 01626]
