Lima

The valley of the Rímac, whose Quechua name means "the talker", was settled long before the Spanish came. The Lima culture built adobe temple mounds here between about AD 200 and 700; one of them, Huaca Pucllana, still stands in the middle of Miraflores. To the south, the sanctuary of Pachacámac grew into a major oracle that Wari, Ychsma and finally Inca rulers each took over rather than tore down. When the Spanish arrived, the coast was already a patchwork of temples, canals and fields.

Francisco Pizarro founded the City of the Kings on 18 January 1535, on the south bank of the Rímac, and the name Lima is the Spanish way of saying Rímac. From 1542 it was the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru, which ran from Panama to Chile. The University of San Marcos opened in 1551 and is counted as the oldest in the Americas. Silver from Potosí flowed to the port of Callao and on to Spain, and Lima grew rich on the trade, with mansions, convents and a court that copied Madrid.

The city was destroyed more than once. Large earthquakes in 1687 and 1746 flattened much of it, and the 1746 quake sent a wave over Callao that wiped out the port. The viceroy rebuilt both, and the Real Felipe fortress at Callao dates from that rebuilding. San Martín proclaimed independence in the Plaza Mayor on 28 July 1821, and Spanish rule ended for good in 1824 at Ayacucho.

The nineteenth century brought a costly war. In the War of the Pacific, Chilean forces beat the Peruvian army at San Juan and Miraflores in January 1881 and occupied Lima until 1883. Miraflores and Barranco were the front line, and the seaside villas of Barranco were looted and burned. The twentieth century turned Lima into a giant: waves of migrants from the Andes settled the hills and sand flats around the old core, building neighbourhoods that the authorities later recognised as districts.

The years from 1980 to 2000 brought political violence to the capital, including the Tarata bombing in Miraflores in 1992. The Lugar de la Memoria museum records the period. Since about 2000 economic growth, new roads, the Metropolitano bus lane (2010) and a food scene that draws the world have changed how the city sees itself, without removing the traffic.

The historic centre, or Cercado de Lima, is where the grid began: streets laid around the Plaza Mayor, with the cathedral on one side and the government palace on another. UNESCO listed it in 1988 and extended the listing in 1991 to include the convent of San Francisco. The centre is a working district. Office workers, street sellers, shoe repairers and pilgrims share pavements that are too narrow for them, and it is best seen on a morning walk and left by mid-afternoon.

Across the river, Rímac keeps some of the oldest streets, the Plaza de Acho bullring (opened in 1766) and the cross on the Cerro San Cristóbal. It is not a tourist area, but it shows how colonial Lima grew outward from the plaza.

Miraflores became a district in 1857 and was a country retreat of orchards and villas before the twentieth century turned it into the modern cliff-top face of Lima. Its parks, towers, cafés and hotels make it the easiest base. The cliff walk, called the Malecón, follows the edge of the Costa Verde with paths for cyclists and paragliders above the beach.

Barranco has always been the artistic sibling. It grew as a seaside resort for Lima families in the late nineteenth century, with villas, a bridge over the path to the beach and a chapel on the hill. After the war it became a district of painters and poets, and it now holds galleries, bars and the small museums of Pedro de Osma and Mario Testino. The old bridge, the Puente de los Suspiros, gets the photos; the alleys behind it get the evenings.

San Isidro is the business district, with an olive grove planted in colonial times and the pre-Inca mound of Huallamarca among its towers. Pueblo Libre is the quiet residential district where San Martín and Bolívar both lived; today it holds the Larco museum and the national museum of archaeology. On the coast, Callao and La Punta keep the port, the fortress and a slow seaside rhythm.

Lima builds with the earth in mind. After the disasters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, builders turned to quincha: a frame of timber and cane packed with mud and covered in plaster. It flexes in a quake instead of cracking. Many of the upper storeys and balconies of the colonial centre are quincha under yellow, blue and white paint, which is why they look solid and weigh very little.

The most recognisable feature is the enclosed wooden balcony, the cajón, that sits above the street and lets residents see out without being seen. The best examples are on the Archbishop's Palace beside the cathedral and on Torre Tagle Palace, an early eighteenth-century mansion with a carved balcony and a courtyard. Casa Aliaga, in the centre, is regularly described as the oldest house in the Americas still lived in by the same family, and it can be visited by appointment.

The cathedral, on the Plaza Mayor, has been rebuilt after quakes several times. Its present form dates mostly from the late seventeenth century and later repairs, and it holds the chapel where tradition places the remains of Pizarro. The convent of San Francisco is a baroque church and cloister with a library and crypts that hold the remains of thousands of people; the catacombs were rediscovered in the twentieth century.

Not everything in Lima is colonial. Dozens of huacas, pre-Hispanic mounds, sit between modern blocks. Huaca Pucllana is built of small adobe bricks stood on edge like books on a shelf, a technique that lets the wall shift without falling. In the twentieth century, the city added Republican villas, art deco cinemas and, in Miraflores and San Isidro, towers that rise along the cliff.

What you see is a city that expects the ground to move. Newer buildings follow strict codes, and hotels post evacuation routes. If a quake occurs, follow staff and stay clear of glass and balconies.

Lima's cooking is the meeting of several migrations on a coast full of fish. Spanish settlers brought lime, onion, rice and pork; enslaved Africans shaped grilled meats and fried sweets; Cantonese labourers arriving from the 1840s began the Chinese-Peruvian kitchen that Lima calls chifa; and Japanese migrants from 1899 added the sashimi-style cuts that became nikkei cooking. Andean produce, from thousands of potato varieties to ají peppers and quinoa, arrived in the city with the migrants who followed.

Ceviche is the emblem: raw fish cured in lime juice with onion, chilli and a slice of sweet potato, served with toasted corn. The origin is debated, but the modern version, quick and sharp, was shaped in Lima's cevicherías. It is a lunch dish because the fish should be bought that morning, and the milky leftover juice, leche de tigre, is drunk as a shot. Ceviche has a national day on 28 June.

Lomo saltado is the best-known chifa dish: strips of beef fried with onion and tomato, soy sauce and fries, served with rice. Anticuchos, skewers of beef heart grilled over charcoal, are a Black Peruvian street food that turned into a national one. Picarones, sweet-potato rings soaked in syrup, are sold in the streets beside them.

Pisco, a grape spirit made around Ica and other southern valleys, is the base of the pisco sour, a drink invented in Lima in the early twentieth century and served with lime, egg white and bitters. Peru celebrates it on the first Saturday of February. Chicha morada, a spiced purple-corn drink with no alcohol, sits beside it at lunch.

Since the 2000s, chefs such as Gastón Acurio, Virgilio Martínez and Mitsuharu Tsumura have made Lima a name in international restaurant rankings. The result is a city where a tasting menu in Barranco, a market menú in Surquillo and a chicken shop are all part of one food culture, and where a cheap lunch is as reliable as an expensive one.

Lima's year turns on a few large dates. Fiestas Patrias, on 28 and 29 July, celebrates independence: flags on every balcony, a military parade and a president's message to Congress on the 28th. The days around are a domestic holiday, and hotels and roads fill.

The most striking event is October's procession of the Señor de los Milagros. The image, a mural of Christ painted in the 1650s by an Angolan slave, is said to have survived the earthquakes that destroyed the wall around it. Each October Sunday, hundreds of thousands of people in purple robes carry a large litter through the centre, with incense, brass bands and sweet-sellers at every corner. The sweet, turrón de Doña Pepa, is eaten only in this month. Streets close and crowds are dense, so plan the centre for another day.

Santa Rosa de Lima, on 30 August, honours the first saint of the Americas, canonised in 1671. Pilgrims queue at her sanctuary in the centre to drop notes into a wishing well. Holy Week, Semana Santa, brings processions and a break from work; the roads out of the city clog on Thursday.

Summer brings beach season and, in early February, Pisco Sour Day. On 31 October, Lima marks Día de la Canción Criolla, a day for the waltz and the marinera, with music in the peñas of Barranco and the centre. In August the Lima Film Festival fills the cinemas, and at Christmas the fountains of the Magic Water Circuit and the lights along Avenida Larco draw families out after dark.

For a visitor the message is practical. Check the calendar before you plan the centre, book rooms early for late July and December, and go to a procession if you can; it explains a side of Lima that the food and the cliff do not. If you cannot be there in October, the Church of Las Nazarenas in the centre, which holds the mural, can be visited outside the procession month (check its hours) and is a quiet way to see what the fuss is about.

Lima's daily rhythm is set by traffic, lunch and the sea. Rush hours run from 07:00 to 10:00 and 17:00 to 20:30, when buses and cars are packed and a 10 km ride can take an hour. Locals plan their day around it, doing the long crossings between rush hours or by the Metropolitano bus lane. Lunch is the main meal, at 13:00 to 15:00, and offices empty into menú restaurants.

The city divides into rich and poor along its length, with the cliff districts and San Isidro at the top of the scale and the hills to the north and east at the bottom. The gap shows in the number of guards at shop doors, in the price of a lunch, and in the number of people who spend two hours a day on a bus. Informal work is huge: street vendors, combi drivers, delivery riders and market sellers are a large part of the city.

The sea is close but not always visible. From May to November a grey cloud hangs over the coast, and residents talk about the garúa as a season. In summer, the beaches of the Costa Verde fill and surf schools run from dawn. Football matters: Alianza Lima and Universitario play in a rivalry that fills the stands and the bars on match days.

Music runs from Andean folk to Afro-Peruvian cajón and the criolla waltz, and it is easy to hear in a peña. Everyday life also has its own vocabulary: a combi is a small bus, a cambista is a street money changer, and yapa is the little extra a market seller adds to your bag.

Visitors do best by adopting some local habits: lunch at midday, an app car between districts, warm layers in winter, and small notes for markets. The rest of the city follows.