Let the four royal roads to the four quarters of the empire begin in the great square of the capital, so that the city is the centre from which the whole realm is divided.
Upper Cuzco and lower Cuzco
Divide the city into two halves, Hanan (upper) and Hurin (lower), each with its own lineages, its own shrines and its own place in the rites.
Garcilaso tells that the founder Manco Capac drew those who followed him into two groups, those he gathered and those his wife gathered, and settled the first in the upper part of the valley and the second in the lower. The two halves were not equal: Hanan was the senior. Andean towns were commonly divided this way into moieties, and the division ran through ritual, office and the Inca’s own lineages.
Related rules
Settle the lords of every province in a ward of the capital lying on the side of the city toward their own province, so that the city holds the order of the whole empire.
Surround the great square with the houses of the kings, each opening onto it by a great hall large enough to hold a festival under cover when it rains.
Build every household, palace and temple as a kancha: a rectangular walled enclosure with a single doorway to the street, its single-room houses set against the walls and facing a central court; pair the kanchas back to back to make the blocks of the town.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Upper Cuzco and lower Cuzco”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/garcilaso-hanan-hurin. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.