Give the first day to the Centro Histórico on foot: Plaza Mayor, the cathedral, the balconies on Jirón Áncash and the catacombs under San Francisco, finishing at the fountains once it is dark. Day two belongs to the coast: Huaca Pucllana, the Malecón and Barranco, then Museo Larco. Keep the third for Pachacamac. Eat ceviche at lunch, never at dinner.
Lima is a capital of eleven million people built on a desert that almost never rains, wedged between the Pacific and the Andean foothills under a lid of low cloud for half the year. Pizarro founded it in 1535 and ran the Spanish empire in South America from it, which is why the centre carries a World Heritage listing.
The clearest single explanation of 5,000 years of Peruvian history, inside an 18th-century mansion built over a pre-Columbian pyramid. Rafael Larco Hoyle began collecting in 1926, and the museum opens its storerooms, so tens of thousands of catalogued vessels sit on shelves you can walk between. The gold gallery is the room people talk about.
A seven-tiered adobe pyramid of the Lima culture, built from around 500 AD and now surrounded on all sides by Miraflores apartment blocks. The bricks are the interesting part: small, hand-made and stood on end with gaps between them, so the structure flexes rather than shears when the ground moves. Excavation is still running, so the site changes.
The square Pizarro laid out in 1535, and the administrative heart of Spanish South America for three hundred years. The Palacio de Gobierno takes one side, the cathedral another, and the carved cedar balconies are the signature the city is known for. Walk it as a loop rather than a checklist, north to Plaza San Martín.
Begun in 1546 and rebuilt after the earthquakes that flattened most of colonial Lima, this is the complex UNESCO inscribed in 1988. The cloisters are lined in Sevillian azulejos, but the catacombs are what people come for: the city cemetery until the early 1800s, with skulls and femurs stacked into geometric wells under the nave.
The old seaside resort of Lima's republican elite, now the district that holds the galleries, the murals, the best bars and two of the best restaurants in the country. The Puente de los Suspiros was inaugurated in 1876 and rebuilt after the Chilean occupation. Take the bajada down to the beach rather than doubling back.
Virgilio Martínez and Pía León run two restaurants out of one Barranco building. Central organises its menu by altitude, from Pacific seafloor to above 4,000 metres, and was named The World's Best Restaurant in 2023. Kjolle upstairs is not the consolation prize. Maido, the Nikkei room in Miraflores, took the same title in 2025.
A chain of clifftop parks running for kilometres above the Pacific, seventy-odd metres up on a bluff of loose conglomerate. The Parque del Amor is the centre of it, with Victor Delfín's El Beso on the grass and mosaic benches carrying Peruvian poetry. Paragliders launch straight off the cliff and turn overhead.
The pilgrimage site of the coast, more than 465 hectares of temples and plazas above the Lurín valley, in continuous use for around 1,500 years until 1533. Pachacamac was an oracle powerful enough that the Inca absorbed it rather than replaced it. The site museum holds the wooden idol and is the right place to start.
Cross the footbridge over the Vía Expresa from Miraflores and you are in the market the city's cooks actually use. Peru grows produce in three climates at once, and this is where that lands in one hall: dozens of potato varieties, Amazon fruit, and a wall of chillies that explains most Peruvian cooking on its own.
Thirteen fountains in a 1920s park behind the Estadio Nacional, relit in 2007 and holding a Guinness listing as the largest fountain complex in a public park. One jet climbs past eighty metres, and a screen of spray takes a projected show set to music. Unapologetically a spectacle, cheap, and better with children.
Gastón Acurio’s cevichería and the standard by which the rest are judged. A lunchtime room that is full by one o’clock.
Taberna criolla doing Lima home cooking at family scale: cau cau, tallarín saltado and a cabrito that arrives in a pot for the table.
A narrow Barranco room where Venezuelan and Peruvian cooking meet over small plates. Book it, because there are barely thirty seats.
Renzo Garibaldi’s butchery and steak counter, dry-ageing on site and serving cuts the rest of the city does not.
A handful of stools on Avenida Angamos, one cook, and ceviche and chicharrón de pescado turned out at market prices. Cash, no bookings.
Charcoal anticuchos at the door and the rest of the criollo repertoire behind them. The easiest introduction to the food if you have one night.
Ranked No.13 in The World’s 50 Best Bars 2025 and given that year’s Art of Hospitality award. Peruvian produce driving the drinks, and a kitchen behind them.
A new entry at No.33 in 2025, styled after Prohibition-era America down to the flat caps, and serious about what is in the glass.
The most decorated bar in the country, first onto the world list in 2019 and reopened at its San Isidro address in January 2022.
Part bar, part argument for the national spirit: flights by grape, and a pisco sour made the way it should be rather than the way hotels make it.
Open since 1905 across from the Palacio de Gobierno, all dark wood and marble. Order a pisco and a sandwich de jamón del país and watch the centre go by.
The district’s oldest bar, a former pharmacy with the shelving still in place. Butifarra, cold beer, no menu worth the name.
Peruvian art from pre-Columbian textiles to the present, in the Palacio de la Exposición of 1872 at the top of the Parque de la Exposición.
The national collection, on the Plaza Bolívar next to the house where San Martín and later Bolívar lived. Heavier going than the Larco, and stronger on the Inca.
Viceregal painting, silver and furniture in a Barranco mansion, plus a wing on the art of the Lake Titicaca basin. The garden alone justifies the walk.
A small, precise textile museum built on a private collection, shown in rotation because the pieces cannot take permanent light.
The contemporary art museum, a low white building around a lawn in Barranco, with a programme that leans Latin American.
The national memorial to the internal conflict of 1980 to 2000, built into the Miraflores cliff. Sober, well made and free to enter.
The old Desamparados railway station behind the Palacio de Gobierno, now a free literature museum with a stained-glass hall worth the detour on its own.
A seven-tier adobe pyramid of the Lima culture, hemmed in by Miraflores blocks and lit after dark. Bricks stood on end are why it survived the earthquakes.
A restored stepped pyramid on a San Isidro corner, older than Pucllana and quicker to see. Climb to the top for the odd view of banks and gardens around it.
Five adobe pyramids on a walled site between Pueblo Libre and Breña, largely ignored by visitors and open on a guided circuit.
An Ychsma governor’s compound east of the centre, reconstructed in the 1950s so the rooms and passages read as rooms rather than outlines, with a site museum attached.
The default base: clifftop parks, most of the hotels, Huaca Pucllana and the shortest walk to a decent restaurant at any hour.
Smaller, older and more interesting: galleries, murals, the Puente de los Suspiros, the best bars and both of the city’s No.1 restaurants.
The colonial core, a World Heritage site and where the churches, balconies and catacombs are. Busy by day, quieter than it should be at night.
The financial district and the money: El Olivar, an olive grove planted in the 1560s, plus Huallamarca and the calmest streets in the city.
Residential, low-rise and holding two of the best museums plus the taberna where the pisco sour is said to have been poured for the first time.
The old port’s republican quarter, restored around an arts programme, with murals, studios and the Real Felipe fortress a few blocks away.
The Costa Verde breaks directly under Miraflores, where most of Lima learns to surf. Gentle, crowded and reachable on foot from the malecón.
Barranco’s stretch of the Costa Verde, at the bottom of the Bajada de Baños. Pebbles rather than sand, and quieter than the Miraflores end.
Forty-odd kilometres south and the surf capital of the Lima coast, with a run of breaks from beginner beach-break to the big-wave reef at Pico Alto.
A heavier right-hander that has hosted international contests for decades. Not a swimming beach, and not a place to learn.
The most pleasant of the southern beach towns to spend a day in: a bay you can swim, a promenade of restaurants above it and an hour’s drive back.
The oldest known city in the Americas, roughly 5,000 years old, six pyramids above the Supe valley and a UNESCO site since 2009. About 190 kilometres north.
A national reserve where the desert meets the Pacific, with a boat out to islands packed with sea lions and penguins. A long day; two is better.
The short version of the same idea, out of the port at Callao: a couple of hours by boat to a sea lion colony you can swim with in a wetsuit.
A river valley in Cañete given over to rafting, vineyards and pisco bodegas, and the standard weekend escape from the city’s cloud.
A village in the Lurín valley whose houses were painted, wall by wall, as a tourism project. Pairs with Pachacamac on the way back down.
The city marks its founding on 18 January with free concerts, open monuments and a 10K road race through the centre.
Holy Week fills the churches of the Centro Histórico, with processions leaving from San Francisco and the cathedral.
Independence is marked on 28 and 29 July: a Te Deum, the presidential address to Congress, and the military parade.
The book fair runs across two weeks at the Centro de Exposiciones Jockey, with several hundred events on the programme.
Latin America's leading film festival in Peru, with screenings extended to Cusco and Iquitos.
The Cristo Moreno leaves Las Nazarenas for several processions across October. The city wears purple all month.
On 31 October the peñas of Barranco and Breña play criollo music through the night, valses and festejos.
The ranking is announced in Lima on 4 November 2026, the first time the ceremony has been held in South America.
Peru's main gateway, in Callao about 12 kilometres northwest of the centre. A new terminal opened in June 2025. Allow an hour to Miraflores, more in the evening peak.
The bus rapid transit line, running in its own lanes down the Vía Expresa. Angamos and Ricardo Palma serve Miraflores; Estación Central is the stop for the Centro Histórico.
26 stations over more than 34 kilometres, elevated almost the whole way. It is a commuter spine rather than a visitor line, and it does not reach Miraflores or Barranco.
Street taxis are unmetered, so the fare is agreed before you get in. Most visitors use the apps instead. Traffic decides everything: the same run can take twenty minutes or an hour.
Raw fish cured in lime juice with chilli and red onion, with sweet potato and choclo. Eat it at lunch.
The Nikkei cousin of ceviche: sliced like sashimi, no onion, dressed at the last moment.
Cold yellow potato pressed with lime and ají amarillo, layered with chicken, tuna or crab.
Shredded hen in a sauce of ají amarillo, walnuts, bread and milk, over rice and boiled potato.
Beef stir-fried with onion, tomato and soy in a searing wok, served with chips and rice.
Beef heart marinated in ají panca and vinegar, grilled over charcoal on skewers. Better on the street.
Charcoal-roasted chicken with chips, ordered by the quarter, with a green sauce every pollería guards.
Manjar blanco under a cap of port meringue, sweet enough to share. Named for a sigh.
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