Lima: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

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Pizarro laid this city out in January 1535 and for two hundred years it was the capital of Spanish South America and the richest city on the continent, because everything mined in the Andes had to pass through it to reach Spain. Then the ground moved. The earthquake of 1746 destroyed almost the whole city, so what you walk through is the rebuild — and the rebuild is made of cane and plaster, not stone, on purpose. Two and a half hours, flat, and the centre is best before three in the afternoon.

A short history of Lima

Ancient cultures lived along this coast, and within the city there are mud-brick pyramids built more than a thousand years ago. On 18 January 1535 Francisco Pizarro founded Lima, the "City of Kings", and it became the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru, which ruled most of Spanish South America. The University of San Marcos, the oldest on the continent, was founded here in 1551. In 1746 an earthquake destroyed most of the city. On 28 July 1821 José de San Martín proclaimed the independence of Peru in the city. In 1988 its historic centre was declared a World Heritage Site.

The ten best sights in Lima

1
Plaza Mayor
Pizarro laid this square out in January 1535 and it has been the centre of government ever since. The fountain in the middle is from 1651 and is the oldest thing on it.
2
Catedral de Lima
Rebuilt after earthquakes four times. The towers look like stone and are wood and plaster, deliberately, so they sway instead of falling.
3
Palacio de Gobierno
Built on the house Pizarro took for himself, where he was assassinated in 1541. The guard changes at noon and it takes half an hour.
4
Convento de San Francisco
The catacombs underneath hold the bones of about twenty-five thousand people, sorted by type and arranged in patterns. The library above has twenty-five thousand volumes.
5
Convento de Santo Domingo
Holds the tombs of three saints, among them Rosa de Lima, the first person born in the Americas to be canonised, and Martin de Porres.
6
Basilica de San Pedro
The Jesuit church, finished 1638, and the least altered baroque interior in the city because it survived the 1746 earthquake.
7
Santuario de Santa Rosa
The house she lived in, with the well she threw the key to her own chains into. People still drop written requests into it.
8
Iglesia de las Nazarenas
Built around a wall painting of a dark-skinned Christ made by an Angolan slave, which survived the 1655 earthquake when everything round it fell.
9
Casa de Aliaga
The same family has lived in it since 1535, which makes it the oldest continuously inhabited house in the Americas. Visits by appointment.
10
Palacio de Torre Tagle
A 1735 mansion with two carved wooden balconies brought from Spain. The enclosed balcony is the signature of colonial Lima and it is Moorish in origin.

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The City of the Kings

Plaza Mayor · Everything round this square is a reconstruction except the bronze fountain in the middle, which was cast in 1651 and has stood through every earthquake since. Lima was founded here on the eighteenth of January 1535 and named Ciudad de los Reyes, City of the Kings, after the three wise men, because Pizarro had chosen the site around Epiphany.
Catedral de Lima · In 1977 workers clearing the crypt found a lead box holding a skull and an inscription naming Pizarro. The body that had been displayed as his since 1891 was examined again, and forensic study in 1984 concluded that the remains in the box were the real ones — the wounds matched the account of his assassination. The city had been showing the wrong man for ninety-three years.
Palacio de Torre Tagle · Look up at the two enclosed wooden balconies. The closed balcony is the signature of colonial Lima and it is not Spanish in origin: it comes from the Moorish mashrabiya, a screened box that lets the person inside see the street without being seen. Lima had hundreds of them, and the ones that survive are mostly on this street and the two beside it.
Convento de San Francisco · Go down into the catacombs. Until 1808 this was the main cemetery of the city and the bones of something like twenty-five thousand people are down there, sorted by bone type and arranged in geometric patterns — femurs with femurs, skulls in circles. The arrangement was done by restorers in the twentieth century, not by the monks, and the museum says so.
Convento de Santo Domingo · Three saints are buried here and two of them say something about colonial Lima. Rosa de Lima, canonised in 1671, was the first person born anywhere in the Americas to be made a saint. Martin de Porres was the son of a Spanish nobleman and a freed black woman from Panama, could not be admitted as a full friar because of his race, and was canonised in 1962 — two hundred and ninety-three years after Rosa.
Barrio Chino · From 1849 about a hundred thousand Chinese labourers were brought to Peru under eight-year contracts to dig guano and cut sugar, in conditions close enough to slavery that the Chinese government eventually sent an inspector and then banned the traffic. The survivors who stayed opened shops and kitchens here on Calle Capon, and the food they cooked — chifa — is now simply Peruvian food, eaten everywhere, by everyone.

The Cliff and the Sea

Lima is a desert city. It gets something like seven millimetres of rain a year, which makes it one of the driest capitals on earth, and yet for eight months of the year it is grey and the humidity sits near ninety per cent. The reason is in the water below you: the Humboldt Current runs cold up this coast, kills the rising air that would make rain, and leaves fog instead. That same cold water makes this one of the richest fisheries in the world, which is why the food in this city is what it is. Two hours along the clifftop, and go late afternoon.

Huaca Pucllana · A clay pyramid from about the year five hundred, standing in the middle of the most expensive district in Lima. It is built of millions of small hand-made adobe bricks stood on their edges with gaps between them, like books on a shelf, and that is why it is still here: the gaps let the structure flex in an earthquake instead of shearing. There are something like four hundred of these huacas inside the modern city.
Parque Kennedy · The square at the centre of Miraflores, and it is full of cats. The district looks after them officially — there is a budget, volunteers and a sterilisation programme — after an attempt to remove them in the nineteen-nineties met enough public resistance that the council reversed it. They are the most photographed residents of Lima.
Parque del Amor · Opened on Valentine Day in 1993, with a mosaic wall carrying lines of Peruvian love poetry and an enormous sculpture of a couple on the ground kissing, called El Beso. The sculptor used himself and his wife as the models. There is no irony anywhere in it, and the city holds a mass kissing competition here every February.
Malecon and the paragliders · The cliff here is about eighty metres high and it is made of loose river gravel, not rock, which is why it is netted and buttressed along its whole length. The sea breeze running up the face is steady enough that people launch paragliders from a strip of grass in the middle of the city and land back on it. You can watch for nothing or fly tandem for about seventy dollars.
Puente de los Suspiros · A wooden bridge of 1876 over the ravine the fishermen used to climb from the beach, in the middle of Barranco. The custom is that you hold your breath the whole way across the first time you do it and your wish is granted. Barranco was the seaside resort of wealthy Lima before the city reached it, which is why the houses are large and wooden and painted.
Museo Pedro de Osma · A mansion in Barranco holding colonial painting of the Cusco school, and the school is the thing worth knowing: Spanish friars taught Andean painters European models, the painters kept the technique and quietly changed the content — gold leaf laid flat over the robes, local plants, Andean faces, and in some paintings the Virgin drawn as a mountain. It was not resistance and it was not obedience.

What Came Before and What Came After

This route is the two halves of Peru that the colonial centre does not tell you: the thousands of years before 1532, and the twenty years after 1980. Lima sits on a coast that has had cities on it for four and a half thousand years, and the museums here hold the best collection of that anywhere. And between 1980 and 2000 the country fought an internal war that killed around sixty-nine thousand people, most of them Quechua-speaking villagers, and the city has one building that says so. Half a day with two taxi legs.

Museo Larco · A mansion from the seventeen hundreds built on top of a pre-Columbian pyramid, holding about forty-five thousand pieces — and the extraordinary thing is that you can walk through the storage. Shelf after shelf of catalogued ceramics, open to the public, which almost no museum on earth allows. The collection runs across three thousand years and the labels are honest about which cultures remain poorly understood.
Museo Nacional de Arqueologia · In this building both Bolivar and San Martin stayed during the independence wars, and it now holds the state collection in plain chronological order. The object to find is the Estela Raimondi, a carved granite slab from Chavin de Huantar: look at it one way and it is a fanged deity standing up, turn the photograph upside down and it is a different figure entirely. The carving was made to be read both ways.
Pachacamac · For well over a thousand years people walked here from all over the Andes to ask questions of an oracle, and the answers were delivered through a wooden idol by priests. When the Inca took the coast they did not destroy it; they built their own temple beside it and kept the oracle working, because an oracle that everyone already believed was worth more intact. In 1533 Hernando Pizarro rode here specifically to strip the gold, and found far less than the stories had promised.
Lugar de la Memoria · Between 1980 and 2000 Peru fought the Shining Path, and the truth commission that reported in 2003 put the dead at around sixty-nine thousand. The finding that changed the country was about who died: about three quarters of the victims had Quechua or another indigenous language as their first language, in a country where that was about a sixth of the population. The war happened to the highlands and was reported from Lima.
Villa El Salvador · In 1971 several thousand families with nowhere to live walked onto empty sand south of Lima and occupied it in an organised operation, with elected block leaders from the first week. The government tried to move them, failed, and then recognised the settlement. The residents laid it out themselves on a grid with reserved plots for schools and squares, and it is now a district of several hundred thousand people. It won an international prize for it in 1987.
Mercado de Surquillo · This is where the restaurant kitchens of Lima buy, and the reason the food in this city is what it is lies on the stalls: Peru has three climates stacked between the cold sea and the Amazon, and over three thousand recorded native varieties of potato. The potato was domesticated in these mountains around eight thousand years ago. Ask a vendor which potato is for which dish; they will answer at length and they will be right.

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Getting to Lima and getting around

Jorge Chavez Airport · The main hub of the western side of South America, in Callao, ten kilometres from the old centre. Take a registered taxi from inside the terminal only.
Estacion Desamparados · A 1912 station behind the presidential palace, now a literature museum. The railway from here still climbs to nearly five thousand metres.
Avenida Arequipa · The spine from the old centre to Miraflores, and where the Metropolitano busway runs. On Sundays part of it closes to cars.
Callao port · The port that was the only legal gateway to all of Spanish South America for two centuries. Everything bound for Europe left from here.

Cheap eats in Lima

Lima is the best city to eat in on this continent and the reason is geography, not fashion. The cold Humboldt Current makes this one of the richest fishing grounds on earth; the Andes behind the city hold over three thousand native varieties of potato and the place where it was first domesticated; and the Amazon on the far side adds a third set of ingredients. On top of that sit two immigrant kitchens that are now simply Peruvian: chifa, from the Chinese labourers brought from 1849, and nikkei, from the Japanese who came from 1899. The counter is a cevicheria at midday or a market stall, three to eight dollars, and ceviche is a lunch dish only.

Ceviche · Raw fish cured in lime with chilli and onion, served with sweet potato and giant corn; lunch only
Anticuchos · Skewered beef heart from a street grill after dark, two dollars for two skewers
Causa and papa a la huancaina · Two cold potato dishes; the yellow potato is the point and there are three thousand varieties
Chifa · Chinese-Peruvian, and not a fusion: lomo saltado is a chifa dish and it is the national dish
Nikkei · Japanese-Peruvian: tiradito is a nikkei dish, cut thin like sashimi with a Peruvian sauce
Pisco sour · Grape brandy, lime, syrup, egg white and bitters. Peru and Chile both claim pisco and neither will yield
Picarones · Doughnut rings of squash and sweet potato in cane syrup, from a pan on the street; a dollar
Chicha morada · A purple drink boiled from black maize with pineapple skin and cinnamon; not alcoholic
Inca Kola · A yellow soft drink that outsells Coca-Cola here, which is why Coca-Cola bought it rather than fight
Cevicheria counters, Surquillo · At the back of the market, open until the fish runs out, which is about two in the afternoon

Museums in Lima

Peru has four and a half thousand years of cities on this coast and the museums in Lima hold the best record of them anywhere. The thing to understand first is that there was no single Andean civilisation: the Inca were last and lasted about a century, and before them came Chavin, Paracas, Nazca, Moche, Wari, Chimu and the Lima culture whose pyramids are inside the modern city. None of them had writing in the usual sense, so the pottery, the textiles and the knotted cords are the record. Larco is the one to do first and it lets you walk through its own storage.

Museo Larco · Forty-five thousand pieces, open storage you can walk through, and a separate erotic pottery gallery
Museo Nacional de Arqueologia · The state collection in chronological order; find the Estela Raimondi, carved to read two ways
Museo de Arte de Lima · Three thousand years of Peruvian art in one line, in the 1872 exhibition palace
Lugar de la Memoria · For the conflict of 1980 to 2000; about sixty-nine thousand dead, three quarters of them Quechua speakers
Museo de la Nacion · A concrete block in San Borja holding the national collections and the Yuyanapaq photographs
Museo Amano · A private textile collection by appointment; the best place to see weaving treated as a document
Casa de la Literatura · Free, in the old railway station, and the clearest account of why so much writing came from here
Museo Pedro de Osma · Cusco-school colonial painting and Andean silver in a Barranco mansion; small and usually empty

Nature and day trips near Lima

Lima is built on a desert and it almost never rains — about seven millimetres a year, which puts it among the driest capitals on earth. Everything green here is either irrigated from three Andean rivers or lives on fog. That is the strange part: the city is grey and ninety per cent humid for most of the year and still gets no rain, because the cold Humboldt Current kills the rising air that would produce it. The same current feeds one of the greatest fisheries in the world. The sea is cold, the sky is low, and twenty minutes inland the sun is out.

The garua and the Humboldt Current · Grey eight months of the year with no rain; the cold water offshore is the whole explanation
Lomas de Lachay · Desert hills that turn green between July and October on fog alone; eighty kilometres north
Pantanos de Villa · Wetlands inside the desert city fed by Andean groundwater; over two hundred bird species
Islas Palomino · Thousands of sea lions a boat ride from Callao, and you can get in the water with them
Costa Verde and the cliffs · Eighty metres of loose river gravel holding up the city; netted and buttressed the whole way
Marcahuasi · A stone forest at four thousand metres, fifty-seven kilometres east; horses or on foot, and an overnight
Obrajillo and the Canta road · Eighty kilometres north-east and twenty-eight hundred metres up, which means out of the fog
Parque de las Leyendas · A zoo divided into coast, mountain and jungle; the clearest geography lesson in the country

Holy places in Lima

Two religious systems meet in Lima and the older one is still visible under the newer. Pachacamac, twenty-seven kilometres south, was an oracle that drew pilgrims from across the Andes for over a thousand years — and when the Inca conquered the coast they left it running, because belief that already exists is worth more than belief you have to install. The Spanish arrived in 1532 and did the opposite, and the result is a city with five canonised saints and a dark-skinned Christ painted by an Angolan slave that is carried through the streets by hundreds of thousands every October.

Pachacamac · An oracle city that drew pilgrims for a thousand years; the Inca kept it working rather than destroy it
Senor de los Milagros · A wall painting by an Angolan slave that survived the 1655 earthquake; carried through the city each October
Santa Rosa de Lima · The first person born in the Americas to be canonised, in 1671; the well still takes written requests
San Martin de Porres · Son of a Spanish nobleman and a freed black woman; barred from full orders by race, canonised 1962
Catacumbas de San Francisco · The main city cemetery until 1808; bones of about twenty-five thousand people, sorted by type
Caral · The oldest city in the Americas, around two thousand six hundred before the common era, and no weapons found
Huaca Pucllana · A clay pyramid of about the year five hundred in the middle of Miraflores, and one of some four hundred
Huaca Huallamarca · An adobe pyramid between apartment blocks in San Isidro, used for burials for over a thousand years

Things to do in Lima with kids

Lima handles children well for one reason: there is a cliff with a ten-kilometre park on it, and everything a child wants is strung along it — grass, playgrounds, a lighthouse, paragliders overhead and a mall built into the rock at the end. Add the water circuit at night, the zoo divided into the three regions of Peru, and the sea lions at Callao. The weather helps: it is never hot and it never rains, so nothing gets cancelled.

Circuito Magico del Agua · Thirteen fountains lit and choreographed at night, and one of them you run through on purpose
Parque de las Leyendas · Zoo and botanical garden split into coast, mountain and jungle, on an archaeological site
Islas Palomino · A boat from Callao to thousands of sea lions, and wetsuits so you can swim with them
Malecon playgrounds · Ten kilometres of clifftop grass with playgrounds every few hundred metres; free and safe
Paragliders at Puente Villena · They launch at eye level from the footbridge; watching costs nothing and it never gets boring
Faro La Marina · A working lighthouse on the clifftop park, moved here from the port; climbable on some days
Huaca Pucllana at dusk · Lit after dark and walkable on raised paths; a pyramid between apartment blocks works on children
Choco Museo · A workshop where children grind cacao beans from the Peruvian Amazon into their own bar

Nightlife in Lima

Barranco is the answer to where to go at night and it is not a close contest: the old seaside resort of nineteenth-century Lima is now a district of bars in wooden houses, murals, small museums and one bridge you cross holding your breath. Miraflores is the safer and duller version. The centre empties after seven and becomes a different place, so do not plan a night there. Drinks start with a pisco sour and the proper hour to arrive anywhere is eleven.

Barranco bars · Wooden houses turned into bars round the municipal park; the best night in the city
Pisco sour at the Bolivar · A 1924 hotel in the old centre that serves an oversized one by tradition; order the catedral
Criollo music and pena · Live Afro-Peruvian music in a pena; the box drum they play is called a cajon and it was a shipping crate
Calle de las Pizzas · Loud, cheap, touristy, and the one place in Miraflores that admits what it is
Larcomar terrace · Cut into the cliff face with the Pacific below; expensive, and worth exactly one drink at sunset
Anticucho grills after dark · Beef heart skewers on charcoal; the queue is the quality signal and it is two dollars
Monumental Callao · A block of the old port rebuilt as galleries and bars; go with a guide and in the evening only
Salsa and cumbia · Lima dances both, and chicha is the local Amazonian cumbia with surf guitar in it

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Frequently asked questions about Lima

What is there to see in Lima?

The top sights in Lima are Plaza Mayor, Catedral de Lima and Palacio de Gobierno. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Lima?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Lima without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Lima?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Lima, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The City of the Kings.

How do you get to Lima and get around?

The main ways are Jorge Chavez Airport, Estacion Desamparados and Avenida Arequipa. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Lima, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Lima that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.

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