MUSEO DE SITIO & PIRAMIDES DE TUCUME

The site is vast and is divided into two routes (Mirador and/or Huaca de las Balsas), plus the visit of the museum. It is best to go early in the morning, as the heat at the site is intense. This is one of the must-see visits if you are interested in the Moche culture. The site is nice, interesting and the museum very well done. It has been renovated, expanded and is very didactic. The team which manages the museum is dynamic and knew how to impose Tucume as one of the emblematic archaeological sites of the region.

In the region, numerous huacas remind that from 1000 to 1470, time when it fell to the Incas, the Mochica Empire was one of the most powerful of Peru. The Huaca Larga, with gigantic dimensions (700 x 280 m and 30 m high), is the biggest construction in adobe of the world. The platform that leans on the Cerro Purgatorio supported temples, houses, places of worship and burial. It is possible to climb it to dominate the arid landscape around. In the Templo de la Piedra Sagrada, marked by a sloping polished stone, different types of offerings were exhumed: sacrificial llamas and 700 miniature silver figures. This temple, the most prestigious of the Mochica Empire, remained it under the Incas. The small construction of the Huaca de las Balsas conserves the walls with geometric designs, in particular the bird in piqué symbol of the local lambayeque culture. Very beautiful pieces of local craft industry also.