The Qhapaq Ñan was the integrated road system that bound the Inca empire of Tawantinsuyu, reaching its greatest extent in the 15th century. It ran for over 30,000 kilometres across the Andes through present-day Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, with paved trunk roads, stairways, retaining walls, drainage and rope suspension bridges crossing gorges. Along it stood waystations (tampu) and storehouses (qollqa) at regular intervals to provision officials, armies and relay runners. UNESCO inscribed the surviving network as a World Heritage Site in 2014.
It enabled a contiguous state to administer a 4,000-kilometre mountain realm without the wheel or draught animals, and structured Andean settlement around its nodes. The road, not the gridded street, was the empire's primary spatial armature.