Pueblo Antiguo de Huaquis, Archaeological site in Miraflores District, Yauyos Province, Peru

Pueblo Antiguo de Huaquis is an archaeological site at 3,750 m on Cerro Huamanchurco, 2.8 km from Miraflores plaza. Its 7-hectare core holds an irregular plaza, a colonial church with a detached bell tower, a three-body school building, a hospital, a jail, and 98 metres of stepped north-south street crossing a 371-metre cobbled east-west street. Houses of unworked stone with clay mortar stand on terraces at nearly 40 degrees.

The Yauyos built and inhabited Huaquis between the 10th and 14th centuries. At the end of the 15th century the Inca state annexed it to Tahuantinsuyo. Under the Viceroyalty it became an Indian reduction within the Laraos repartimiento of the Yauyos corregimiento and was renamed San Agustín de Guaquis. It stayed inhabited for a century after independence until the population moved to the new town of Miraflores, leaving it empty in 1919.

The site's name changed under Spanish rule: it was baptized San Agustín de Guaquis when the village became a reducción de indios in the Viceroyalty. The colonial church, with its separate bell tower holding three bells, stood south of the irregular plaza; the bells called residents to mass and assembly.

The walk from Miraflores plaza to the site entrance covers 4 km and takes about 60 minutes, climbing to 3,750 m on Cerro Huamanchurco. Inside, the paved east-west street runs 371 m end to end, while the north-south street climbs 98 m by a sequence of steps. Houses sit on terraces linked by passages on a slope of nearly 40 degrees.

The agricultural area, called El Gran Maizal, covers 40 to 50 hectares of terraces beside the 7-hectare town. The name refers to maize, but the terraces also served crops such as potato, mashua and oca, dried on patios and stored in second-level rooms.