Peru's fog-wrapped desert capital, where colonial balconies, adobe pyramids and some of the world's most celebrated kitchens share one clifftop coast.
Long before Spain arrived, farming peoples of the Rímac valley raised pyramids of mud brick here; one of them, Huaca Pucllana, still stands between apartment blocks. In 1535 Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish conquistador who toppled the Inca Empire, founded his capital near the coast and named it the City of the Kings. For two centuries it ruled Spanish South America — rich, ornate and shaken by earthquakes. Today about 10.1 million people (2023) live in a grey-skied desert city widely called the gastronomic capital of the Americas, strung along green cliffs above the Pacific.
Francisco Pizarro was the illegitimate son of a Spanish colonel, raised poor and never taught to read. In 1532 he and fewer than two hundred men seized the Inca emperor Atahualpa, and within three years the largest empire in the Americas was theirs. On 18 January 1535 he paced out a grid of streets beside the Rímac river and named it the City of the Kings. The name never stuck: people kept using the valley's older name, Limaq — "the talker", after an oracle the Spanish had pulled down. Pizarro was murdered in his own hall six years later by rivals from his own side, and his head stayed lost until 1977, when workmen under the cathedral floor opened a lead box inscribed with his name.
Lima sits on a fault line and has always known it. The earthquake of 28 October 1746 flattened the city in about four minutes: of some 3,000 houses, 25 were left standing, and a tsunami wiped out the port of Callao. What survived, again, was a mural of the crucified Christ painted on an adobe wall by an enslaved African man. Limeños call it the Señor de los Milagros, and every October hundreds of thousands walk behind its copy through the streets. Under the Basilica of San Francisco lies the other half of that story: catacombs used as the city cemetery until 1810, where the bones of an estimated 25,000 people lie stacked in wells.
Modern Lima moved out to the cliffs. From May to November a low sea cloud called the garúa parks over the city — barely 1,300 hours of sun a year, less than London — and its drizzle greens the Costa Verde escarpment above the surf. Miraflores and bohemian Barranco run along the top, paragliders lifting off the promenade. And Lima eats: ceviche joined UNESCO's living-heritage list in 2023, the Larco Museum holds 5,000 years of pottery and gold, and two restaurants here have been named the world's best — Central in 2023, Maido in 2025.
The making of Lima
Plaza Mayor
The square Pizarro paced out in 1535 — cathedral, Government Palace and yellow wooden balconies, at the heart of a UNESCO-listed old town.
San Francisco & the catacombs
A yellow Baroque basilica above the city's colonial burial vaults, where the bones of an estimated 25,000 people lie stacked in wells.
Huaca Pucllana
A seven-tiered pyramid of hand-made mud brick, raised some 1,800 years ago and now marooned among the apartment blocks of Miraflores.
Francisco Pizarro
The Spanish conquistador who toppled the Inca Empire and laid out Lima in 1535 — and whose head turned up under the cathedral in 1977.
The Lord of Miracles
A crucifixion painted on a wall by an enslaved African man, which outlived three earthquakes; every October it draws one of the world's largest processions.
The Costa Verde cliffs
A wall of green escarpment above the Pacific, with Miraflores and bohemian Barranco along the top and surfers in the water below.
Ceviche & the pisco sour
Raw fish cured in lime with onion, chilli, corn and sweet potato — UNESCO heritage since 2023 — and the cocktail Lima invented in the 1920s.
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