Tilcara

Tilcara rises in tiers from the Quebrada de Humahuaca floor to a ridgeline of cactus and clay, its steepest lanes better walked than driven and its Pucará visible from every corner of town. The hilltop citadel commands sightlines down twenty kilometres of coloured canyon in both directions — exactly as its builders intended.

This is the cultural centre of the UNESCO-listed quebrada, on the trade route that has linked the Bolivian altiplano to the Argentine lowlands for millennia. The Pucará was occupied by successive cultures from around 900 AD until the Spanish arrived; its excavation, begun in 1908 by the University of Buenos Aires, produced one of Argentina's most significant archaeological collections, kept in the museum below, and parts of the fortress were reconstructed in the campaigns that followed. A century of painters has given the village's galleries a weight unusual for its size, and carnival season here — devil-horned comparsas, flour in the air, the compadres and comadres traditions — dissolves the line between street and dance floor while it runs. Give the fortress its own unhurried time, then let the market streets and museums fill the rest; programmes and hours change, and the town rewards checking rather than assuming.