Hunzahúa Well

Sacred Muisca well wrapped in a love-and-incest origin legend

The Hunzahúa Well — Pozo de Hunzahúa in Spanish — is a circular sunken pit on the northern edge of central Tunja, surrounded by a small park and named for the legend of the Muisca chief whose sister-lover supposedly created it by spilling chicha as she fled the city. The Muisca treated the well as sacred and it was a pilgrimage site within the confederation.

It is not a spectacular site visually — the well itself is now mostly silted up and the surrounding park is unremarkable — but it carries a real story, and the panels on the Muisca origin myth are interesting. Best combined with a visit to the Cojines del Zaque a few blocks south; together the two sites give some sense of what was here before the Spanish founded their colonial city on top.

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A story
The Muisca told a story about Hunzahúa, the chief who gave Tunja (then Hunza) its name: he fell in love with his own sister Noncetá, and the two of them were driven out of the city under a curse. As they fled, the chicha (corn beer) the sister was carrying overflowed and formed this very well — which the Muisca then considered sacred. When the Spanish arrived they tried to drain it looking for gold; centuries of sediment have refilled it but the depression remains.

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