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Highway of an Empire: The Great Inca Road

Highway of an Empire: The Great Inca Road

American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 79th Street
(between 77th and 81st Streets)
New York, NY  10024
Tel: (212) 769-5200
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$9.00 children, $12.00 seniors, students, $16.00 adults.

Dates

Ongoing

Hours

Mon – Sun: 10 am – 5:45 pm

Closed Thanksgiving and Christmas.
This exhibition of over 35 photographs features the 25,000 miles of roads and trails that the Incas built six centuries ago in South America. On view in the IMAX Corridor on the second floor, the exhibition explores the roads that crisscrossed the Incan realm, radiating out from Cuzco, the Inca capital tucked in the mountains of modern-day Peru.

The vast Inca Empire owed its reach and power to this extensive and intricate network of roads. Linking forts, religious sites, and administrative centers from the Pacific coast to the Amazonian rainforest, the Inca roads allowed armies and imperial officials to conquer and then control the largest empire in the Americas.

The photographs reveal the diversity of this road system—from broad paved highways to woven suspension bridges to beaten tracks through barren desert—and of the landscape through which it travels. Other highlights include round terraces of Moray; a tropical forest located along the Amazon tributary near the present-day border between Peru and Bolivia; Sondor, a terraced knoll that may have been used for religious rituals; the Huascarán peak in the Cordillera Blanca, the highest in Peru and one of the highest in the Andes; Laguna de Los Condores, where in 1996 a local worker discovered a cache of some 200 mummy bundles tucked in a cliff side high above a lake; Andeans gathering a potato crop; and maps of the road network.

Visitors interested in learning more about the subjects featured in Highway of An Empire can also visit the museum’s Hall of South American Peoples.


 

  • Directions: Subway: B, C to 81st Street - Museum of Natural History

About this Organization

American Museum of Natural History

The largest natural history museum in the world has a mission commensurately monumental in scope. Permanent hall exhibitions focus on dinosaurs, mammals, ocean life, geology and more. The Rose Center for Earth and Space explores the entire universe.
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American Museum of Natural History Listings

  • Picturing Science: Museum Scientists and Imaging Technologies

    Sat, June 25, 2011 – Sun, June 24, 2012 Whether scientists are studying parasites, people or planets in other solar systems, cutting-edge imaging technologies now make it possible to examine details that were previously unobservable. This exhibition features over 20 sets of large-format images that showcase the wide range of research being conducted at the museum as well as how various optical tools are used in scientific studies.

  • Rose Center for Earth and Space

    Ongoing The Rose Center encompasses the Hayden Planetarium and exhibitions that explore the vast range of sizes in the cosmos; the 13-billion-year history of the universe; the nature of galaxies, stars and planets; and the features of planet Earth. A moon rock is displayed near the entrance to the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth.

  • SciCafe

    Ongoing The first Wednesday of the month, enjoy the museum after hours with music, drinks and thought-provoking conversation at this free, popular series.

  • All American Museum of Natural History Listings