Travel and Tourism in Peru

Arequipa and the White City in Depth

Arequipa deserves more extensive treatment as a destination that rewards extended exploration beyond the Monastery of Santa Catalina. The city's extraordinary colonial architecture, built almost entirely from sillar, the white volcanic stone quarried from the flanks of the surrounding volcanoes, creates a cityscape of rare coherence and luminosity, and the quality of Arequipeño cuisine, which has its own distinct culinary traditions separate from Lima's more internationally celebrated food culture, makes Arequipa a gastronomic destination in its own right.

The cuisine of Arequipa is arguably as distinctive and important a regional culinary tradition as any in Peru, built around the extraordinary variety of aji peppers grown in the Arequipa region, the unique ingredients of the high-altitude valleys and altiplano, and centuries of culinary tradition maintained in the city's famous picanterias, traditional restaurants that specialize in Arequipeño regional dishes. Rocoto relleno, a large red rocoto pepper stuffed with a filling of spiced ground meat and vegetables and baked under a cheese crust, is Arequipa's signature dish, and the fierce heat of the rocoto pepper, significantly hotter than most Mexican chilies, makes it an emphatically local taste that non-Arequipeños approach with caution. Chupe de camarones, a rich soup made with river prawns from the Arequipa valleys combined with potatoes, corn, aji, milk, and egg, is another Arequipeño specialty of extraordinary richness and flavor.

The Collagua and Cabana communities of the Colca Valley, accessible on day trips or multi-day excursions from Arequipa, maintain some of the most authentic highland cultural traditions in southern Peru. The two communities are distinguished by their traditional headdresses: Collagua women wear distinctive conical hats of embroidered felt, while Cabana women wear flat-topped decorated sombreros, a visual difference that reflects deeper cultural distinctions that trace back to pre-Inca times. The village churches of the Colca Valley, built by Spanish missionaries in the seventeenth century, are decorated in a mestizo baroque style that combines European religious iconography with Andean imagery in a visual fusion unique to this region.

The El Misti volcano, rising to 5,822 meters above the city of Arequipa, is one of the most frequently climbed volcanoes in Peru, its relatively gentle slope and accessible starting points making it a technical but non-technical ascent that can be accomplished by fit trekkers with proper acclimatization and equipment. The climb offers extraordinary views across the Arequipa valley and to the Pacific coast on clear days, and the presence of the volcano dominates every view of the city below, its perfectly symmetrical conical profile one of the most photogenic volcanic silhouettes in the world.

Peru's Thirteen UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Peru's thirteen UNESCO World Heritage Sites represent the full breadth of the country's extraordinary cultural and natural heritage, spanning more than five thousand years of human history and some of the most remarkable landscapes on Earth.

The City of Cusco was inscribed in 1983 as the outstanding example of the overlay of Spanish colonial and Inca civilizations, a city of unique historical depth and architectural distinction. The Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu, inscribed in 1983 for both cultural and natural values, is one of the most iconic and visited World Heritage properties in the world. The Archaeological Zone of Chavin, inscribed in 1985, protects the extraordinary ceremonial center of the first major pan-Andean culture at Chavin de Huantar. Huascaran National Park, inscribed in 1985, protects the world's highest tropical mountain range and its extraordinary glacial landscapes and biodiversity.

Chan Chan Archaeological Zone was inscribed in 1986 as the outstanding example of the pre-Columbian adobe city tradition and the largest such city ever built, though it remains on the Danger List due to ongoing threats. Manu National Park, inscribed in 1987 as both a Natural Heritage site and a Biosphere Reserve, protects one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth in the cloud forests and lowland Amazon of southeastern Peru.

The Historic Centre of Lima was inscribed in 1988 and extended in 1991 as an outstanding example of Spanish colonial urban planning and architecture in the Americas. Rio Abiseo National Park, inscribed in 1990 for natural values and extended in 1992 for cultural values when extraordinary pre-Columbian ruins were discovered within its boundaries, protects cloud forest of exceptional biodiversity on the eastern Andean slopes.

The Lines and Geoglyphs of Nasca and Pampas de Jumana were inscribed in 1994 as one of the world's greatest archaeological mysteries and an outstanding example of pre-Columbian cultural practice. The Historical Centre of Arequipa was inscribed in 2000 for its extraordinary colonial architecture in white volcanic stone. The Sacred City of Caral-Supe was inscribed in 2009 as the oldest civilization in the Americas, contemporary with the Old Kingdom of Egypt.

The Qhapaq Nan Andean Road System was inscribed as a transnational World Heritage property in 2014, shared between six countries, recognizing the extraordinary engineering achievement of the Inca road network across some of the most challenging terrain on Earth. The most recent inscription, the Chankillo Archaeoastronomical Complex, was added in 2021, protecting the oldest known solar observatory in the Americas, a remarkable Peruvian site of approximately 2,300 years of age on the northern coast.

Peruvian Festivals and Cultural Life

Peru's calendar is filled with festivals that express the extraordinary cultural richness of a country where indigenous Andean traditions, Spanish Catholic heritage, and the influences of African, Asian, and other immigrant communities have blended into a unique cultural mixture unlike anything found elsewhere in the world. These festivals are not performances staged for tourists but living expressions of community identity and religious faith that have deep roots in both pre-Columbian and colonial history.

Inti Raymi, the Festival of the Sun, is celebrated every year on June 24, the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, at Sacsayhuaman above Cusco. The festival, which re-enacts the Inca ceremony honoring the sun god Inti, was suppressed by the Spanish colonial authorities after the conquest but was revived in 1944 and has since become the most spectacular cultural festival in the Andes, attracting tens of thousands of visitors from Peru and abroad. The ceremony involves hundreds of performers dressed in historically accurate Inca costumes, the symbolic sacrifice of a llama, and dramatic speeches and prayers delivered in Quechua in a setting of extraordinary theatrical power.

The Festival of the Virgin of Candelaria in Puno, held in February, is the largest folk festival in South America, filling the city with more than seventy dance troupes from throughout the Puno region performing in elaborately embroidered and decorated costumes of extraordinary richness. The festival combines Catholic devotion to the Virgin of Candelaria with pre-Columbian Andean spiritual traditions in a synthesis that is entirely characteristic of Andean religious life. UNESCO inscribed the Festival of the Virgin of Candelaria as an element of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2014.

Qoyllur Riti, the Star Snow Festival, is one of the most extraordinary and least-known religious pilgrimages in South America, a gathering of tens of thousands of indigenous pilgrims at the foot of the Sinakara glacier in the Andes above Cusco every year in the weeks before Corpus Christi. The pilgrimage blends Catholic devotion with ancient Andean mountain worship, and the ritual involves pilgrims climbing the glacier in traditional costumes, including a remarkable group of ritual performers called ukuku, half-bear half-human figures dressed in shaggy costumes who serve as guardians of the sacred site.

Semana Santa, Holy Week in the week before Easter, is celebrated throughout Peru with particular intensity in Ayacucho, whose extraordinary series of religious processions and ceremonies over nine days has made it one of the most celebrated Easter celebrations in Latin America. The Ayacucho Semana Santa, with its remarkable religious imagery carried through the streets on enormous floats by thousands of devoted participants, is recognized as one of the finest examples of Spanish colonial religious tradition maintained in the Americas.