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Kuelap Chachapoyas Citadel
The monumental Citadel of Kuelap is situated at 3000 m above sea level. Kuelap consists of massive exterior stone walls containing more than four hundred buildings. The structure, situated on a ridge overlooking the Utcubamba Valley in northern Peru, the citadel has about 600 meters in length and 110 meters in width judging from its sheer size, its walls rise up to 19 meters in height. There are multiple levels or platforms within the complex. Because of its extension, these flat elevations support more than 400 constructions, among Temples, warehouses, resident houses which most of them are cylindrical.
It could have been built t the 6th century AD and occupied until the mid XVI century. Kuelap's construction has required considerable effort, this citadel rivals or surpass in size to other archaeological structures in the Americas. This prime example of Chachapoyan architecture, remained ignored by the outside world until 1843, when Juan Crisóstomo Nieto, a Chachapoyas judge (Juez), made a survey of the area and took note of Kuelap's great size, he was guided by villagers who had known of the site for generations. Subsequently, Kuelap earned the attention of explorers, historians and archaeologists. Notable observers who helped publicize the site included Frenchman Louis Langlois (who wrote a description of Kuelap in the 1930s), Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier, Ernst Middendorf, Charles Wiener and the renamed Italian historian Antonio Raimondi.
There are three structures that stand out from the hundreds of others within the complex: El Tintero, La Atalaya and El Castillo. In recently years, diverse mausoleums were found by accident on the banks of a lagoon known as "Laguna de las Momias" (Mummies' lagoon), located in an inaccessible and uninhabited place of the district of Leimebamba in the province of Chachapoyas. The first exploratory expedition integrated by archaeologists was directed by Federico Kauffmann Doig, in May-June, 1997. Five mausoleums, that were protected by a cave that presents rock paintings, were replete with funeral bundles, objects of ceramics, quipus, etc., attributable to the Chachapoyas culture.