El Fuerte de Samaipata, Pre-Columbian archaeological site in Samaipata, Bolivia

El Fuerte de Samaipata is a pre-Columbian archaeological site centered on a massive sandstone rock carved with images of snakes, pumas, jaguars, and geometric designs. The location contains multiple levels with ceremonial and administrative areas distributed across the grounds.

The Chané of the Mojocoyas period occupied the site as a ritual and residential area around 300 CE and began shaping the great rock. Under Túpac Yupanqui (ruled 1471–1493), a relative named Guacane led an Inca army that persuaded the local leader Grigota and his 50,000 subjects to submit; the Inca then built a plaza and residences, dated to the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Chiriguano attacks, dated by many authorities to the 1520s, killed Guacane and Grigota, and the Spanish settled formally in 1615 before founding the town of Samaipata in 1618.

The name Samaipata comes from Quechua, meaning "the heights of rest." The Chané shaped the rock as a lunar observatory, using water channels and basins to mirror the sky and track the moon's phases, tied to a lunar deity. The site is wrongly called a fort; the Inca used it as a ceremonial and administrative center before Chiriguano warriors took it.

The site covers about 20 hectares at roughly 1,900 metres, split into a northern ceremonial sector around the carved rock and a southern administrative and residential sector with the trapezoidal plaza and kallanka. The rock saddle is uneven and slopes, so wear shoes with grip. The nearby town of Samaipata serves the site.

The Spanish built a settlement at the fort with houses in Arab Andalusian style, then abandoned it and founded the town of Samaipata in a nearby valley in 1618. A Spanish house still stands among the ruins, and the site is Bolivia's second most visited archaeological monument.