Welcome To Lima: The Tourist Destination Full Of Historic Religious Charm
LIMA, Peru — The old has become new again, as tourists flock to Lima to enjoy new trendy restaurants and marvel at the historic sites that a local government agency has taken great care to restore.
As the Peruvian capital approaches its 500th anniversary, the “City of Kings” is revamping its looks, and it’s paying off with increased tourism revenue.
Founded in 1535 by Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro, Lima was once the most important city in South America. Churches, buildings, squares and streets speak to the city’s past.
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Created in 1542 by the Spanish, the Viceroyalty or Kingdom of Peru covered most of South America until the early 18th century, when the Bourbon reforms introduced new territorial divisions. As the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru during the colonial era, it was a political, administrative, religious and economic center.
“Here, in the City of Kings, the destinies of South America were directed,” said Luis Martín Bogdanovich, general manager of the Planning, Management and Restoration Department of the Historic Center of Lima, known as Prolima. “It was home to the first university on the continent, as well as the provincial houses of the religious orders. The large libraries were here. This has historical, spiritual, artistic and economic value.”
In 1991, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, known as UNESCO, declared Lima’s historic center a World Heritage Site. Three years later, the Municipality of Lima founded Prolima.
Conceived as a municipal program with a few workers, Prolima evolved to become an agency with a team of 1,200 people, said Bogdanovich. Its workers include restorers from Chile, Mexico and Colombia, in addition to Peru, where Prolima has taken over the entire market, he added.
Prolima has restored six churches with a cost of 45.1 million soles (USD $13.3 million) in the last four years. Funding comes from municipal resources and 3% of the general sales tax collected in the historic center of the city. The revenue from the sales tax has increased over the years due to the growing number of visitors to Lima’s center.
“Last year it was 160 million soles [$47 million]. This year it’s 170 million soles. It will probably be a little more next year, and so on,” Bogdanovich said.
However, this is not enough to cover the complete restoration of Lima’s center by 2035, when the city celebrates its 500th anniversary.
“While the resources are much greater than those of any other city in Peru, they’re still insufficient for everything that needs to be done in Lima,” he said.
In addition to churches, Prolima has restored squares, theaters, museums and gardens. The restoration of Lima’s center has spurred a new wave of tourism. People who only stopped in Lima on their way to Cuzco and Machu Picchu, South America’s most visited site, are now staying in the capital.
“Tourism in the historic center has increased considerably,” said Bogdanovich.
In 2024, around 1.8 million tourists visited Lima’s center, according to Promperu, the government agency that promotes Peru for exports and tourism. Even limeños, as the residents of the capital are known, are visiting the center.
Gonzalo de Aliaga lives in the house his ancestor, the Spanish conqueror Jerónimo de Aliaga, built in 1535 next to another conqueror, Francisco Pizarro’s home, where the government palace now stands. Aliaga is amazed by his neighborhood’s revival.
“Many people from Lima are coming to the city center. It's become trendy because there are new restaurants and a great atmosphere,” he said.
Aliaga’s home is also a historic landmark open to visitors. It is the oldest house in the Americas to have belonged to the same family. Seventeen generations of Aliagas have lived there.
The minor basilica and convent of Santo Domingo, known for being the site where the first university in the Americas, the National University of San Marcos, began operating in the 16th century, stands behind the Aliaga house. Founded by Dominican friars on land donated by Pizarro, the complex is a mixture of Renaissance and Baroque styles, with a Rococo tower dating from the 18th century.
Prolima completed its restoration in 2025. With a cost of 9.8 million soles (USD $2.9 million), the work included all sides of the building’s façade and interventions in strategic parts of the structure. It required 100 specialists, including architects, engineers, archaeologists, conservators and masons. The church houses the remains of the two most venerated Peruvian saints, San Martín de Porres and Santa Rosa de Lima.
Other recently restored buildings include religious sites such as the church and convent of Nuestra Señora de la Buena Muerte (Our Lady of the Good Death), founded by the Camillian fathers in the early 18th century; the church of the Santo Cristo de las Maravillas (Holy Christ of Wonders), built as a chapel in the 18th century and transformed into a neoclassical building in the 19th century; and the church of Santiago Apóstol del Cercado, founded in the 16th century and one of the oldest in Lima.
“Not only have the facades been restored, but also the structure of the churches, which makes them last over time,” Aliaga added.
Earthquakes and years of neglect had damaged Lima’s historic buildings. At Prolima, they’re convinced that the restoration work has saved the historic center from collapse.
“Restoration isn’t simply about recovering something,” Bogdanovich said. “It’s about identifying what once had value and bringing it into the present. We don’t remodel the city center, we restore it. When I joined Prolima in 2016, nobody was talking about Lima. People talked about Andean folklore. We don’t need to import things from the interior of the country. We need to reclaim what’s ours.”
You can read this story in Spanish here.
Graciela Ibáñez is a journalist with a Master of Arts from Columbia Journalism School, where she graduated in 2008. She works as a professor of journalism at Universidad Gabriela Mistral and at Universidad Viña del Mar in Chile. She covers Chile for foreign media outlets, including TRT World, Americas Quarterly and The Art Newspaper. She worked as a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires and REDD Intelligence in Santiago and for Debtwire in New York City. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Viña del Mar.