Urubamba

Urubamba is the river and the town in the middle of the valley the Inca called sacred. The valley floor is flat and green, the only real farmland for a long way, and on both sides the slopes step up in terraces to villages where weaving is still done on the backstrap loom. Our Urubamba cap takes its name from here and its cloth from the diamond weave of the valley.

The valley

The Sacred Valley runs from Písac down past Urubamba and Ollantaytambo toward Machu Picchu, following the river at around 2,800 metres, lower and warmer than Cusco above it. The Inca terraced its sides for maize and lined its floor with estates. Urubamba, in the middle, is the market town: the place the valley's produce and cloth come down to, and the base for the villages of Chinchero and the salt pans of Maras on the ridge above.

The weaving villages

The finest weaving in the region comes from the villages on the ridges above the valley floor. Chinchero, above Urubamba, is the best known: a village of weaving cooperatives where the whole process, from washing the wool to the finished cloth, is still done by hand and shown to anyone who asks. The diamond and stepped motifs in those cloths are the ones the Inca cut into their stone and wove into tocapu.

The cap named Urubamba

The Urubamba is a five-panel camp cap in a sun-gold diamond weave with gold chakana embroidery. The pattern reads against a dark ground, which puts it in the night family, Tuta, even though the colour is warm. It is the closest thing we make to a tocapu. Its valley neighbours are the Písac fine stripe and the Maras salt-pink ball cap.

Other cities

All twenty on the cities. Cusco · Písac · Maras · Puno · Huaraz · Arequipa · Nazca · Paracas · Callao · Iquitos · Cajamarca · Tacna · La Paz · El Alto · Copacabana · Oruro · Potosí · Sucre · Cochabamba. See all the pieces named for Andean towns on headwear and bags, and the cloth families on the weaves.