The room filled with gold

In November 1532, at Cajamarca, Francisco Pizarro and fewer than two hundred men captured Atahualpa, lord of the largest empire in the Americas. The Inca quickly understood what drove those strangers and made them an unprecedented offer: he would fill the room where he was held once with gold, up to a line marked at the height of his outstretched arm, and twice more with silver.

For months, caravans from every corner of the empire delivered the treasure: cups, figures, sheets of gold stripped from temple walls. The Spaniards melted almost all of it into bars. It is estimated they gathered some six tonnes of gold and nearly twice as much silver: probably the most expensive ransom ever paid for a single person.

Atahualpa kept his word. Pizarro did not: months later he had him executed anyway. In Cajamarca you can still visit the so-called Ransom Room, the only Inca building left in the city. A room that once held an empire in metal, and could not buy a single life.