author
Pedro de Cieza de León
1518–1554
A young Spanish traveler turned his years in South America into one of the earliest and most valuable written portraits of the Andes and the Inca world. His work still stands out for its detail, curiosity, and on-the-ground observation.
5 Audiobooks
Segunda parte de la crónica del Perú, que trata del señorio de los Incas Yupanquis y de sus grandes hechos y gobernacion
by Pedro de Cieza de León
The War of Chupas
by Pedro de Cieza de León
The War of Quito
by Pedro de Cieza de León
The travels of Pedro de Cieza de Léon, A.D. 1532-50, contained in the first part of his Chronicle of Peru
by Pedro de Cieza de León
The travels of Pedro de Cieza de Léon; part 2
by Pedro de Cieza de León
About the author
Born in Llerena, Spain, around 1518 or 1520, Pedro de Cieza de León crossed the Atlantic as a teenager and spent years traveling through what are now Colombia and Peru. He took part in the turbulent world of early Spanish expansion, but he became best known not as a soldier, but as a careful observer who wrote down what he saw.
His great work, Crónicas del Perú (Chronicle of Peru), brought together geography, history, local customs, and accounts of the Inca past. Readers and historians have long valued it because he recorded places, peoples, and traditions with unusual breadth, and because he wrote close in time to the events and societies he described.
Cieza de León died in Seville on July 2, 1554, still a young man. Even so, his writing became a lasting source for understanding the Andes in the sixteenth century, and he is often remembered as one of the most important early chroniclers of Peru.