Tom Holland

Their capital is completely round.

They call it the navel of the earth, and that's what it looks like.

In the middle was a huge temple, the center of their faith.

The walls were plated with gold, enough to blind us.

Inside, set out on tables, golden platters for the sun to dine off.

Outside the garden, acres of gold soil planted with gold maize, entire apple trees in gold, gold birds on the branches, gold geese and ducks, gold butterflies in the air on silver strings.

And, imagine this, away in a field, life-sized, twenty golden llamas grazing with their kids.

The Garden of the Sun at Cusco.

A wonder of the earth.

Look at it now.

So that was posh boy Anando de Soto in Peter Schaffer's play, The Royal Hunt of the Sun.

Came out in 1964.

We've been hearing a lot from it.

And de Soto in that passage is describing one of the great wonders of the world in the early 16th century, which was Coricantia, the Temple of the Sun.

in cusco and dominic that is from a play but peter shaffer i mean he loves his research doesn't he he's obviously gone to the primary sources and reworked them it's very very closely based on some primary sources that we'll hear from later in this episode they were written by spanish chroniclers a few years after the fall of the incas and that sense um i mean you did it in a sort of very clipped 1950s war film voice but i think generally when people perform that play

There's a sense of wonder and awe in their voices.

Well, should I go back and redo it?

No, no, no one wants that.

Their capital is completely round.

And actually, while he's speaking in that voice, loads of Indian porters in the play, I'd say Indian in inverted commas because that's what they're called in the play, they've been removing the rays of the sun, which are like petals, and piling them up in this giant horde of loot for the Spaniards.