Rumicucho is a pucara (hilltop fortress) located 23 kilometres (14 mi) in a straight-line distance north of the city of Quito at an elevation of 2,401 metres (7,877 ft).

Rumicucho in the Quechua language means "stone corner", perhaps referring to its strategic location between the territory of the Yumbo people to the east and the chiefdoms of the Pais Caranqui to the north.

Rumicucho has also been called Lulumbamba (fertile plain), a reference to the valley to its west, now mostly urbanized but formerly intensely cultivated.

The Incas established or strengthened existing pucaras as bases to conquer the chiefdoms of the Pais Caranqui of whom the Cayambe may have been the most powerful.

[2] The Incas and pre-Inca peoples had an extensive knowledge of astronomy and often located their installations in places appropriate for observations of solar events, including the equatorial solstice, which they called "the day when man has no shadow.