COLONIAL LIMA AND THE SACRED CITY OF PACHACAMAC

The City of Eternal Spring

Over eight million people call Lima their home. They live in an intriguing and exciting city in which skyscrapers stand next to beautiful colonial architecture and the green pacific coast gives way to the desert as you head inland. The capital of Peru has everything to offer today's visitor, from the best of colonial Lima, with its churches, hidden houses and grand buildings, to what you might call the Real Lima... a busy, bustling and cosmopolitan city with all the shops, nightlife, restaurants and everything else you would expect to find in one of the biggest cities in South America.

As well as the architecture there are some superb museums with exhibitions covering all of Peru's long history. Most intriguingly of all, just to the south of Lima lie the remains of the city of Pachacamac, which was sacred both to the Incas and to other, much older, cultures.

Look at a holiday visiting Lima

Arrival of the Conquistadors

The Rimac valley has been occupied since prehistoric times, but it wasn't until Fernando Pizarro founded the city of Lima in 1535 that there was any significant settlement on this exact spot - indigenous settlements had been based nearer the sacred site of Pachacamac. Tellingly, Pizarro landed in January - the middle of the Peruvian summer - and so was unaware of the thick coastal fog which covers the city in clouds for about 5 months a year... Despite this distinctly un-Spanish weather, Lima prospered during the colonial period and became the capital of 'New Spain', with all the wealth of the New World being channelled through its port of Callao on its way back to Europe. The people of Lima grew wealthy off this trade and many European observers commented on the lavish buildings and dress they found here!

Sadly, a massive earthquake in 1746 destroyed many of Lima's best colonial buildings, and the colonial centre was ignored for many years as rich Limeños moved to the suburbs but today the centre has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a re-evaluation of the artistic and architectural wealth at the heart of Lima is going on, with many buildings either already restored or in the process of being cleaned and renovated. There's never been a better time to wander around the centre and visit the many attractions of the City of the Kings!

You'll definitely want to see the imposing Plaza de Armas, with its baroque cathedral, the Palacio de Gobierno (Peru's Buckingham Palace - complete with changing of the guard!) and the Archbishop's Palace, with its huge carved wooden balconies. From there you can easily visit the church and convent of San Francisco, whose jolly yellow facade covers a rather grisly secret... Underneath the convent lie the catacombs which acted as the cemetery for the whole of Lima during the colonial period! Also nearby is the church and convent of Santo Domingo which has beautifully-preserved Baroque cloisters and a superb altar to Santa Rosa de Lima, the city's patron saint. Santo Domingo is also noteworthy because on this site in 1551, Lima saw the foundation of San Marcos University - the very first in the Americas.

There are tons of other sites to see in Lima, of course, from the Gold museum with its Inca and pre-Inca jewellery and metalwork, to the shopping centre built into the cliffs overlooking the Pacific. Our 'Peru Pack' of information that we send to each customer will give you some tips or we can organise a tour of the city for you, where our expert guides will make sure you don't miss a thing!

Food, Drink, and Lima at Night

Once you've exhausted your camera batteries you'll probably want to relax and start thinking about something good to eat... you'll be pleased to hear you're in the right place: Lima is home to some of the best restaurants in South America! Peru's food is among the best in the world (see our guide here) but if you don't fancy that then the city has everything from Lebanese to Thai, by way of Brazil and Italy. Lima also has a large Chinatown and, although you can find Chinese restaurants (or 'Chifas') everywhere, this is a great destination for a lively dining experience! Once you've finished eating, then Lima's a great place to go out if you fancy a few drinks, with Miraflores and Barranco being the most lively areas - Lima comes a lot closer to the 24-hour ideal than any city in the UK so we're sure you'll be able to find something to your taste!

The Oracle of Pachacamac

Twenty miles south of Lima, along the Pan-American highway, lies the sacred city of Pachacamac. In the heart of the Lurín valley, it was the main Inca and pre-Inca settlement in the Lima area. The most recent archaeological findings from the site suggest that there was uninterrupted occupation from around 200AD right up until the Spanish arrived in 1533. The entire site, consisting of dozens of streets and temples, was dedicated to the god Pachacamac, who successive cultures in the area venerated as their creator-god and who was felt to be present at the site in the form of an Oracle.

When the Incas conquered the Ishmay culture in the fifteenth century, they very sensibly decided that they didn't want to get on the wrong side of anyone who'd had quite so many temples built for them and instead simply absorbed Pachacamac into their existing pantheon! The "Inca" Temple of the Sun that you can see at Pachacamac today is in fact just an Inca superstructure constructed over the top of a previous Ishmay temple.

The site is very well preserved, and several of the buildings have been carefully reconstructed, which gives visitors a great chance to get a picture of how the site must have looked 500 years ago. We can organise a guided tour of this unique site and its on-site museum which has exhibits of ceramics, textiles and some of the religious artefacts found on the site.

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