Trujillo's main square is is one of Spain's most spectacular plazas, surrounded as it is by baroque and Renaissance stone buildings topped with a skyline of towers, turrets, cupolas, crenellations and nesting storks.
In the plaza's northeastern corner is a large equestrian statue of the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, by American Charles Rumsey. But all is not as it seems. Apparently, Rumsey originally sculpted it as a statue of Hernán Cortés to present to Mexico, but Mexico, which takes a dim view of Cortés, declined it, so it was given to Trujillo as Pizarro instead.
On the south side of the plaza, carved images of Pizarro and his lover Inés Yupanqui (sister of the Inca emperor Atahualpa) decorate the corner of the 16th-century Palacio de la Conquista . To the right is their daughter Francisca Pizarro Yupanqui with her husband (and uncle), Hernando Pizarro. The mansion was built in the 1560s for Hernando and Francisca after Hernando – the only Pizarro brother not to die a bloody death in Peru – emerged from 20 years in jail for murder.
Off the plaza's northeastern corner, is the 16th-century Palacio de los Duques de San Carlos , which serves as a convent for the Jerónimo order. The distinctive brick chimneys were built in Mudéjar style.
