The Sacred Valley of the Incas or Urubamba Valley is a valley

Valley

In geology, a valley or dale is a depression with predominant extent in one direction. A very deep river valley may be called a canyon or gorge.The terms U-shaped and V-shaped are descriptive terms of geography to characterize the form of valleys...

 in the Andes

Andes

The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...

 of Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

, close to the Inca

Inca Empire

The Inca Empire, or Inka Empire , was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political and military center of the empire was located in Cusco in modern-day Peru. The Inca civilization arose from the highlands of Peru sometime in the early 13th century...

 capital of Cusco

Cusco

Cusco , often spelled Cuzco , is a city in southeastern Peru, near the Urubamba Valley of the Andes mountain range. It is the capital of the Cusco Region as well as the Cuzco Province. In 2007, the city had a population of 358,935 which was triple the figure of 20 years ago...

 and below the ancient sacred city of Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu is a pre-Columbian 15th-century Inca site located above sea level. It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru, which is northwest of Cusco and through which the Urubamba River flows. Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for...

. In colonial documents it is referred to as the "Valley of Yucay", according to recent researches it encompasses the heartland of the Inca Empire (Bauer, Covey 2002).
The valley is generally understood to include everything between Calca and Lamay, Písac

Písac

]Písac is a Peruvian village in the Sacred Valley on the Urubamba River. The village is well-known for its market every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, an event which attracts heavy tourist traffic from nearby Cusco....

 and Ollantaytambo

Ollantaytambo

Ollantaytambo is a town and an Inca archaeological site in southern Peru some 60 kilometers northwest of the city of Cusco. It is located at an altitude of 2,792 meters above sea level in the district of Ollantaytambo, province of Urubamba, Cusco region...

, it has been formed by the Urubamba River

Urubamba River

The Urubamba River is a river in Peru. A partially navigable headwater of the Amazon River, it rises in the Andes to the south-east of Cuzco near the Puno Region border, where it is called the Vilcanota River . In the Sacred Valley, between Písac and Ollantaytambo, it is also called the Wilcamayu...

, also known as Vilcanota River or Wilcamayu. The latter means in Quechua, the still spoken lingua franca of the Inca Empire the Sacred river. It is fed by numerous rivers which descend through adjoining valleys and gorges, and contains numerous archaeological remains and villages. The valley was appreciated by the Incas due to its special geographical and climatic qualities. It was one of the empire's main points for the extraction of natural wealth, and one of the most important areas for maize

Maize

Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...

production in Peru northwards from Pisac. The early Incas may have come from Wimpillay as their mummies had been discovered there (Covey 2003). Large scale maize production started around 1400 as Inca urban agriculture (Protzen 1993) based on varieties bred in Moray, either a governmental crop lab (Earls 1989) or a seedling nursery of the Incas (Plachetka, Pietsch 2009).