The Palace of the Inca at Tombebamba

Ecuador's third city, Cuenca, impresses today's visitors with the charm of its colonial streets, its shady plazas, fine seigneurial houses, its two cathedrals and many white- washed churches from the sixteenth century. In everything there are reminders of Old Spain; even its name was borrowed from the famous city of Castile.

Tucked behind a dilapidated college building, some ancient remains lie stranded at the edge of town, their modern neighbours seeming to resent their continued existence. There are some well-fashioned stone niches, a stone chamber re-worked into a watermill by seventeenth-century Spaniards, and the remains of a great palace, that of Huayna Capac, the last of the great Incas, who ruled from 1493 until his premature death in 1525. These are the only physical reminders of the short but turbulent tenure of the Incas, and of Tomebamba, their northern capital.