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North of Lima, the Fortress of Paramonga is the first site of real interest, the best preserved of all Peru's coastal outposts, built originally to guard the southern limit of the powerful Chimu empire. To get from Barranca - the best base to explore the ruins - to Paramonga, take the efficient local bus service, which leaves from the garage at the northern end of town, every hour or so. The Fortress of Paramonga (daily 8am-5.30pm; $1.5) sits less than 1km from the ocean and looks in many ways like a feudal castle. Constructed entirely from adobe, its walls within walls run around the contours of a natural hillock similar in style and situation to the Sun Temple of Pachacamac. As you climb up from the road, by the small site museum (daily 8am-5pm) and the ticket office, you'll see the main entrance to the fortress on the right. Heading into the maze-like ruins , you'll find the rooms and sections get smaller and narrower the closer you get to the top - the original palace-temple. From here there were once commanding views across the desert coast in either direction; today, looking south, you see vast sugar-cane fields, now farmed by a co-operative, but formerly belonging to the US-owned Grace Corporation, once owners of nearly a third of Peru's sugar production. In contrast to the verdant green of these fields, irrigated by the Rio Fortaleza, the fortress stands out in the landscape like a huge, dusty yellow pyramid. There are differences of opinion as to whether the fort had a military function or was purely a ritual centre, but as most pre-Conquest cultures built their places of worship around the natural personality of the landscape (rocks, water, geomorphic features and so on), it seems likely that the Chimu built it on an older huaca, both as a fortified ritual shrine and to mark the southern boundary of their empire. It was conquered by the Incas in the late fifteenth century, who built a road down from the Callejon de Huaylas and another that ran along the sands below the fortress. Hernando Pizarro was the first Spaniard to see Paramonga, arriving in 1533 en route from Cajamarca to Pachacamac. He described it as "a strong fort with seven encircling walls painted with many forms both inside and outside, with portals well built like those of Spain and two tigers painted at the principal doorways". There are still red- and yellow-based geometric murals visible on some of the walls in the upper sector, as well as some chess-board patterns.
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