Tourist Attractions in Lima (Peru)

As Lima has developed as a tourist centre, there is no doubt that the city can offer to its visitors a great number of attractions that are worth seeing. Here we try to make a list with the most interesting among them. 

1.     Plaza Mayor and Plaza San Martin

A long pedestrian street crowded with shoppers, vendors and sightseers connects Lima's two main plazas to each other. The heart of the old town is centerd on the striking Plaza Mayor, or Plaza de Armas, gracefully colonial with its bronze fountain and old street lamps. It was once the central marketplace, where bullfights were held during Spanish rule

2.     Museo de la Nación (National Museum)

The superb anthropological and archaeological National Museum contains excellent exhibits tracing the history of Peru’s ancient civilizations and provides an outstanding overview of the archaeological richness of the country. It is the city’s largest and the country’s most important museum and the chronological layout guides visitors easily through the complicated ancient history, highlighting the many conquering cultures and their achievements, from the art and history of the original inhabitants to the Inca Empire.

3.     Museo Rafael Larco Herrera

The 18th century colonial-style museum houses the largest and most impressive ceramic collection in the world, with about 55,000 pre-Colombian clay pots on display. The collection concentrates on the refined ceramics of the Moche Dynasty, the people who lived along the northern coast of Peru between 200 and 700 AD. The Moche culture is recognized as accomplishing one of the greatest imaginative languages of ancient Peru through the use of creative pottery, providing clues to all aspects of their civilization without the use of the written word.

4.     Church of San Francisco

The most spectacular of Lima's colonial churches, San Francisco is a striking white and yellow building with twin towers and a stone façade. It was one of the few buildings to survive the devastation of the 1746 earthquake and is famous for its underground catacombs that contain the bones and skulls of an estimated 70,000 people. The interior of the church has arches and columns decorated with beautiful mosaic tiles and an exquisitely carved Moorish-style wooden ceiling above the staircase leading to the cloisters.

5.     Pisco

Pisco is a small port and fishing village, best known for its fiery white grape brandy of the same name. It also boasts the origins of one of the major ancient civilisations in Peru, the Paracas culture, who left an astounding collection of antiquities that are displayed in the museums of Lima. The area is primarily visited as a base to see the wildlife of the nearby Paracas National Reserve, home to an incredible variety and huge concentration of marine animals and birds.

These are only some of the most interesting attractions in Lima. To have enough time to see all of them, we can assure you that only a day will not be enough. So it is better to find a place where to stay. We recommend you the hotels in Lima. There are so many hotels in Lima that it is just impossible not to choose something that your pocket will allow. But if you want to guarantee your stay in a preferred hotel in Lima it is better to make a reservation in advance.