Style Blog

For most travelers, Lima represents modern Peru—a city of trendy restaurants, discos, and shopping centers that one must pass through en route to the ancient marvels of Cuzco and Machu Picchu.

What few realize, however, is that Peru’s capital conceals ruins far older than anything built by the Incas. Beneath the desert sands of the region lie artifacts that date back not centuries, but millennia. These archaeological treasures were already turning to dust before the first stones were laid at Cuzco.

The two sites listed below are must-sees for anyone visiting Lima. Together they afford a glimpse of el Peru profundo—the deep Peru that continues to exert its pressure on the present.

Huaca Pucllana
Calle General Borgoño cuadra 8 (Miraflores)
445-8695

Located in the heart of ultra-modern Miraflores, just steps from the bustling Ovalo Gutierrez, this huaca (sacred monument) offers stunning testimony to the persistence of the past in Peru’s capital.

Imagine if the Great Gatsby was your uncle, and he was Peruvian, and invited you over for the summer….if this were true, your Hudson might have been the Pacific, and your room a lofty dream surrounded by great artists.

This brand new hotel (its first guests were welcomed in May 2013) is known as ‘The House of Barranco’ (La casa de Barranco), and this is exactly what the management aims for: a home away from home, but also a celebration of life and all things beautiful.

Barranco has always been known as the bohemian district of Lima, but up till now it never had a real ‘art hotel’. The art is as eclectic as its international visitors, and some of it is for sale, but mostly it is there to create a place of wonder, as a complement to the grandeur of the French classic architecture.

From the moment you set foot in the hotel, you’ll also see large coffee table books everywhere: ‘we want to spark people’s curiosity, inspire them and make them feel part of Peruvian culture but also of the whole world’ says Carlos Jimenez, a Spanish arts historian who now works for the hotel.