El Fuerte de Samaipata
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How it came to be
El Fuerte de Samaipata stands in the eastern foothills of the Andes in Bolivia. Its centre is a red sandstone rock about 220 m long and 60 m wide, carved with animals, geometric shapes, niches, channels and basins. Around AD 300 the Chané of the Mojocoyas period made it a ritual and residential centre and began shaping the rock.
The Inca later took the area and made it a provincial centre; Samaipata means the heights of rest in Quechua. At least five temples once lined the south face of the rock, of which only niches remain, and two felines are the only high-relief carvings on the site.
From the 1520s it served as a bulwark against Chiriguano raids from the lowlands. The Spanish also lived here for a time, and the remains of a house in Arab-Andalusian style stand at the foot of the rock. When a new town was founded in the valley, the old settlement was abandoned. It was inscribed in 1998.
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