Top 10 Things to Do in Lima

Miraflores is Lima's most prosperous and internationally polished district, a cliffside neighbourhood perched 70 metres above the Pacific whose Malecon walkway offers dramatic views across the ocean to the Lima coast, while its streets below are lined with the best concentration of ceviche restaurants, craft cocktail bars, and international hotels in the country. The Larcomar shopping mall is carved into the cliff face itself with a multiplex cinema, rooftop bars, and restaurants cantilevered over the crashing Pacific surf. Parque del Amor, decorated with mosaic murals inspired by Gaudi's Park Guell, commemorates Lima's tradition of romantic couples gathering at the cliffside benches at sunset.

Huaca Pucllana is a remarkable 5th-century Lima culture ceremonial pyramid rising seven storeys from a residential neighbourhood in Miraflores — one of the most extraordinary urban archaeological sites on Earth, where ancient adobe construction sits directly alongside contemporary Lima apartment buildings. The pyramid was constructed using the distinctive "librero" (bookshelf) technique of upright mud bricks that allowed it to flex rather than crumble in earthquakes, and recent excavations have uncovered sacrificial offerings and textile-wrapped mummies. The on-site restaurant, perched at the base of the illuminated pyramid for evening dining, offers some of the most atmospheric tables in South America.

Barranco is Lima's most beautiful and creatively vital neighbourhood — a 19th-century resort district of wooden Victorian mansions, jacaranda-lined boulevards, and cliff-edge parks that has become the city's arts and nightlife quarter. Its Bajada de los Banos pedestrian path descends through a garden of bougainvillea to the Pacific shore, and the wrought-iron Bridge of Sighs crosses a ravine above a lovers' lane where tradition holds you must make a wish before the bridge ends. The neighbourhood's independent galleries, pisco bar scene, and weekend street fairs make it the most livable and lovable corner of Lima.

The Paracas National Reserve, four hours south of Lima on the Peruvian coast, is a hauntingly beautiful desert-meets-ocean wilderness protecting 335,000 hectares of the Paracas Peninsula and adjacent Pacific waters — home to enormous colonies of Humboldt penguins, sea lions, flamingos, and condors. The Ballestas Islands, accessible by speedboat, are nicknamed the "Poor Man's Galapagos" for their density of marine wildlife, including sea lions resting on guano-white rocks inches from the boat. The reserve's Cathedral rock arch, red beach, and extraordinary wind-carved desert formations give it a geological drama rare on any coast.

Although technically in Cusco rather than Lima, the Cusco Cathedral is the most important religious building in the Andes and a masterpiece of Baroque architecture built between 1559 and 1654 on the foundations of the palace of Inca Viracocha using stones quarried from the nearby Inca fortress of Sacsayhuaman. Its interior contains 400 colonial paintings from the Cusco School, lavishly gilded altarpieces, and the famous painting of the Last Supper by Marcos Zapata in which Christ and his apostles are depicted dining on cuy (guinea pig), chicha beer, and Andean vegetables. The cathedral houses 400 years of Peru's most important religious art.

Pachacamac is a vast pre-Columbian sacred city and oracle site 31 kilometres south of Lima that was the most important religious pilgrimage destination on the Pacific coast for over a thousand years before the Inca conquest, dedicated to the creator god Pachacamac whose oracle was consulted on matters of war and catastrophe. The site covers 600 hectares and includes the largest adobe pyramid on the Peruvian coast — the Sun Temple built by the Inca on an older Lima culture base — as well as a remarkable on-site museum housing 500-year-old mummy bundles and Wari textiles. Visiting at low season allows you to wander its desert adobe streets alone in a silence that makes the ancient city feel alive.

Central, run by chef Virgilio Martinez, has been ranked the best restaurant in Latin America multiple times and reached number one on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list in 2023, offering a tasting menu called "ecosystems" that climbs vertically through Peru's altitude zones — from the deep Pacific at -10 metres through coastal desert, Amazon river systems, cloud forest, high-altitude plains, and glacial peaks at 4,100 metres — each course made exclusively from ingredients harvested at that elevation. The restaurant moved in 2022 to a compound in Barranco that includes a research laboratory, seed bank, and sister restaurant Kjolle. Dining at Central is a geography lesson, a biology seminar, and one of the most intellectually and gastronomically ambitious meals available anywhere.

Lima's Historic Centre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, preserves the finest concentration of Spanish colonial Baroque architecture in the Americas, from the Plaza Mayor surrounded by the Government Palace, the Cathedral, and the Archbishop's Palace with its extraordinary carved wooden balconies, to the Monastery of San Francisco with its catacombs containing the remains of 70,000 people in intricate bone-mosaic arrangements. The centre's ornate wooden balconies — limena balconies — are found nowhere else in the world, their screens of carved cedar allowing 16th-century Lima women to observe street life without being seen. The surrounding streets retain their colonial grid and many original building facades dating to the 1550s.

Chorrillos is Lima's oldest seaside district and its working fishing community, where a colourful fleet of small boats departs before dawn and returns to the La Chira beach pier with fresh catch sold directly to the city's cevicherias and housewives at a chaotic waterfront market of fish, octopus, and scallops on ice. The Chorrillos clifftop park offers a dramatic Pacific panorama and the neighbourhood's La Rosa Nautica restaurant — built on a pier over the ocean — is one of Lima's most romantic dining destinations. The Huaca Palomino archaeological site in Chorrillos is rarely visited and offers a quieter experience of Lima's pre-Columbian layers.

Miraflores is Lima's most prosperous and internationally polished district, a cliffside neighbourhood perched 70 metres above the Pacific whose Malecon walkway offers dramatic views across the ocean to the Lima coast, while its streets below are lined with the best concentration of ceviche restaurants, craft cocktail bars, and international hotels in the country. The Larcomar shopping mall is carved into the cliff face itself with a multiplex cinema, rooftop bars, and restaurants cantilevered over the crashing Pacific surf. Parque del Amor, decorated with mosaic murals inspired by Gaudi's Park Guell, commemorates Lima's tradition of romantic couples gathering at the cliffside benches at sunset.

Huaca Pucllana is a remarkable 5th-century Lima culture ceremonial pyramid rising seven storeys from a residential neighbourhood in Miraflores — one of the most extraordinary urban archaeological sites on Earth, where ancient adobe construction sits directly alongside contemporary Lima apartment buildings. The pyramid was constructed using the distinctive "librero" (bookshelf) technique of upright mud bricks that allowed it to flex rather than crumble in earthquakes, and recent excavations have uncovered sacrificial offerings and textile-wrapped mummies. The on-site restaurant, perched at the base of the illuminated pyramid for evening dining, offers some of the most atmospheric tables in South America.

Barranco is Lima's most beautiful and creatively vital neighbourhood — a 19th-century resort district of wooden Victorian mansions, jacaranda-lined boulevards, and cliff-edge parks that has become the city's arts and nightlife quarter. Its Bajada de los Banos pedestrian path descends through a garden of bougainvillea to the Pacific shore, and the wrought-iron Bridge of Sighs crosses a ravine above a lovers' lane where tradition holds you must make a wish before the bridge ends. The neighbourhood's independent galleries, pisco bar scene, and weekend street fairs make it the most livable and lovable corner of Lima.

The Paracas National Reserve, four hours south of Lima on the Peruvian coast, is a hauntingly beautiful desert-meets-ocean wilderness protecting 335,000 hectares of the Paracas Peninsula and adjacent Pacific waters — home to enormous colonies of Humboldt penguins, sea lions, flamingos, and condors. The Ballestas Islands, accessible by speedboat, are nicknamed the "Poor Man's Galapagos" for their density of marine wildlife, including sea lions resting on guano-white rocks inches from the boat. The reserve's Cathedral rock arch, red beach, and extraordinary wind-carved desert formations give it a geological drama rare on any coast.

Although technically in Cusco rather than Lima, the Cusco Cathedral is the most important religious building in the Andes and a masterpiece of Baroque architecture built between 1559 and 1654 on the foundations of the palace of Inca Viracocha using stones quarried from the nearby Inca fortress of Sacsayhuaman. Its interior contains 400 colonial paintings from the Cusco School, lavishly gilded altarpieces, and the famous painting of the Last Supper by Marcos Zapata in which Christ and his apostles are depicted dining on cuy (guinea pig), chicha beer, and Andean vegetables. The cathedral houses 400 years of Peru's most important religious art.

Pachacamac is a vast pre-Columbian sacred city and oracle site 31 kilometres south of Lima that was the most important religious pilgrimage destination on the Pacific coast for over a thousand years before the Inca conquest, dedicated to the creator god Pachacamac whose oracle was consulted on matters of war and catastrophe. The site covers 600 hectares and includes the largest adobe pyramid on the Peruvian coast — the Sun Temple built by the Inca on an older Lima culture base — as well as a remarkable on-site museum housing 500-year-old mummy bundles and Wari textiles. Visiting at low season allows you to wander its desert adobe streets alone in a silence that makes the ancient city feel alive.

Central, run by chef Virgilio Martinez, has been ranked the best restaurant in Latin America multiple times and reached number one on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list in 2023, offering a tasting menu called "ecosystems" that climbs vertically through Peru's altitude zones — from the deep Pacific at -10 metres through coastal desert, Amazon river systems, cloud forest, high-altitude plains, and glacial peaks at 4,100 metres — each course made exclusively from ingredients harvested at that elevation. The restaurant moved in 2022 to a compound in Barranco that includes a research laboratory, seed bank, and sister restaurant Kjolle. Dining at Central is a geography lesson, a biology seminar, and one of the most intellectually and gastronomically ambitious meals available anywhere.

Lima's Historic Centre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, preserves the finest concentration of Spanish colonial Baroque architecture in the Americas, from the Plaza Mayor surrounded by the Government Palace, the Cathedral, and the Archbishop's Palace with its extraordinary carved wooden balconies, to the Monastery of San Francisco with its catacombs containing the remains of 70,000 people in intricate bone-mosaic arrangements. The centre's ornate wooden balconies — limena balconies — are found nowhere else in the world, their screens of carved cedar allowing 16th-century Lima women to observe street life without being seen. The surrounding streets retain their colonial grid and many original building facades dating to the 1550s.

Chorrillos is Lima's oldest seaside district and its working fishing community, where a colourful fleet of small boats departs before dawn and returns to the La Chira beach pier with fresh catch sold directly to the city's cevicherias and housewives at a chaotic waterfront market of fish, octopus, and scallops on ice. The Chorrillos clifftop park offers a dramatic Pacific panorama and the neighbourhood's La Rosa Nautica restaurant — built on a pier over the ocean — is one of Lima's most romantic dining destinations. The Huaca Palomino archaeological site in Chorrillos is rarely visited and offers a quieter experience of Lima's pre-Columbian layers.