Lima travel guide

Top 10 sights in Lima

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Wasiwatana · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Cathedral of Lima

   The cathedral on the Plaza Mayor, begun in 1535 on the plot Pizarro chose and rebuilt after the earthquakes of 1687 and 1746. Its vaults are wood and plaster rather than stone for that reason, and the remains identified as Pizarro's lie in a side chapel.

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2. 

   2© Velvet · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Larco Museum

   A private museum in an eighteenth-century viceregal mansion at Pueblo Libre, showing five thousand years of Peruvian art in chronological rooms. Its storeroom of 45,000 vessels is open to visitors, and a separate gallery holds the Moche erotic pottery.

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3. 

   3© Thomas S. · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Historic Centre of Lima

   The historic core across Lima and Rímac, a World Heritage site since 1988 within a monumental zone declared in 1972. Pizarro founded the city here on 18 January 1535, and it was the political and religious capital of Spanish South America for two centuries.

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4. 

   4© User:Pedro Felipe · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Government Palace

   The seat of the executive, on the plot where Pizarro built his house and was murdered in 1541. The present palace dates from 1938; the changing of the guard at noon is performed by the Húsares de Junín in nineteenth-century dress.

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5. 

   5© Allan Grey · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Plaza Mayor, Lima

   The square Pizarro laid out on 18 January 1535, with the government palace, the cathedral, the archbishop's palace and the city hall around it. The bronze fountain in the middle, of 1651, is the oldest structure still standing on the plaza.

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6. 

   6© AgainErick · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Puruchuco

   An Inca administrative centre in the Ate district, of adobe rooms and courtyards, whose name means feathered helmet in Quechua. A 2004 dig for a road found more than two thousand mummy bundles here, including men killed in the Inca resistance of 1536.

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7. 

   7© Dibojutri · CC BY-SA 3.0

   El Paraíso

   A Late Preceramic site of about 3500 to 1800 BC in the Chillón valley, over fifty-eight hectares of stone-built compounds and one of the largest settlements of its date anywhere. A bulldozer destroyed one of its mounds in 2013, which caused a national scandal.

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8. 

   8© Ibrehaut · CC BY-SA 4.0

   National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology, and History of Peru

   The oldest and largest museum in Peru, in the Magdalena palace at Pueblo Libre where Bolívar and San Martín both lived. Over a hundred thousand objects include the Raimondi Stele from Chavín and a scale model of Machu Picchu.

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9. 

   9

   Museum of Italian Art

   The only European art museum in Lima, given by the Italian community in 1923 for the centenary of independence, in a marble Renaissance-revival building of its own. Two large mosaic panels on the facade show scenes from Italian history.

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10. 

    10© Jorge Gobbi from Buenos Aires, Argentina · CC BY 2.0

    Plaza de toros de Acho

    The oldest bullring in the Americas, opened in 1766 in Rímac and second in the world only to Seville's Maestranza. It seats about thirteen thousand and holds the Señor de los Milagros season each October, the most important in South America.

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1. 

   1© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Monastery of San Francisco

   A Franciscan complex of 1774, rebuilt in Limeño baroque after the earthquakes, whose library holds twenty-five thousand volumes on rotating shelves. Below it run catacombs where some twenty-five thousand people were buried, the bones now sorted into geometric patterns.

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2. 

   2© Ingo Mehling · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Basilica and Convent of Santo Domingo

   A Dominican convent of the 1530s holding the relics of Rose of Lima and Martín de Porres, the first saints of the Americas. San Marcos, the oldest continuously operating university in the hemisphere, was founded in its chapter house in 1551.

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3. 

   3© Ministerio de Defensa del Perú · CC BY 2.0

   Plaza San Martín

   A square of 1921 laid out for the independence centenary, with San Martín on horseback in the middle and the Gran Hotel Bolívar on one side. The bronze Madre Patria below him was given a llama on her helmet by mistake — the Spanish word for flame was misread.

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4. 

   4© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Archbishop's Palace of Lima

   The archbishop's residence on the Plaza Mayor, rebuilt in 1924 in neo-colonial style, and famous for two cedar balconies carved in the Moorish manner. Its museum shows the archdiocese's colonial paintings and silver.

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5. 

   5© Medios Públicos EP · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Cristo del Pacífico

   A 37-metre Christ on the Morro Solar headland above Chorrillos, given to the city in 2011 by Brazilian construction firms at the end of Alan García's presidency. The gift was contested from the start; the statue looks out over the Pacific rather than the city.

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6. 

   6

   Real Felipe Fortress

   A fortress of 1747 at Callao, built after a tsunami destroyed the port's earlier defences and designed against pirates and privateers. Its garrison held out until 1826, the last Spanish position in South America, and it is still an army barracks with a museum inside.

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7. 

   7© BluesyPete · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Gold Museum of Peru and Weapons of the World

   A private museum at Monterrico holding Andean gold and silver work alongside twenty thousand weapons collected from around the world, from samurai armour to Hitler's pistol. Doubts have been raised about some of the gold pieces since a 2001 investigation.

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8. 

   8© UE en Perú · CC BY 2.0

   Lima Art Museum

   The city's art museum, in the iron-framed Palacio de la Exposición of 1872, covering three thousand years from Paracas textiles to contemporary Peruvian work. It opened in 1961 and the park around it fills with skateboarders in the evenings.

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9. 

   9© Rainbowasi from Lima, Peru · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Basilica of Nuestra Señora de la Merced

   A church of the Mercedarian order begun in 1535, with a Churrigueresque granite facade of the 1690s that is the most elaborate in Lima. The silver cross of Padre Urraca inside is touched by queues of people every Friday.

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10. 

    10© Miguel Francisco Rueda Ñañez · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Torre Tagle Palace

    A merchant's mansion of 1735 on Calle Ucayali, two blocks from the plaza, and the finest surviving example of Limeño domestic baroque with its two carved cedar balconies. It has housed the foreign ministry since 1918.

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