Free Walking Tour Lima: From Old Centre to Huaca

Your Lima Walking Tour, from MALI to San Isidro

1. 1

   Museo de Arte de Lima

   

   Before you go in, look at the building itself. The museum, known to everyone as MALI, sits in the Palacio de la Exposición, built for the 1872 World's Fair in Exposition Park at the entrance to the historic centre. The Italianate façade was designed by Antonio Leonardi, an Italian architect then living in Lima, and it wraps a cast-iron structure that came from Gustave Eiffel's atelier between 1870 and 1871.

   The park around you has its own story. It was laid out by Leonardi together with the journalist Manuel Atanasio Fuentes on the site of the Guadalupe Gate, one of ten gates in Lima's city wall. The wall came down in 1868 during José Balta's modernisation campaigns, and this palace and park were part of the new, open city that replaced it. Remember Fuentes: you will meet his name again on the next street.

   The museum opened in 1961 and is a private institution, kept alive by admission fees, members and donations. Its collection spans almost 3,000 years, from pre-Columbian ceramics and textiles to sculpture and painting of the modern era. The renovated galleries on the second floor, reopened in 2015, hold the most important pieces. More than 1,000 contemporary works mostly wait in storage for a new wing, but the temporary shows are strong: Gerhard Richter, Martin Chambi and Annie and Josef Albers have all been exhibited here.

   Is it worth going inside? If you only visit one museum in Lima and want to understand Peru's art from its earliest cultures onwards, yes; an hour gives you the highlights. Then walk 1,470 m, about 22 minutes, towards the old city, passing the Paseo de los Héroes Navales on the way to Jirón de la Unión.

   Hours

   Tue–Fri, Sun 10:00–18:00, Sat 10:00–17:00, Mon closed

   Price

   S/ 40 foreigners (S/ 20 reduced for foreigners: students, teachers, seniors over 65); S/ 15 nationals and residents (S/ 7.50 reduced); children under 8 free

   Website

   mali.pe ↗

   Location

   Museo de Arte de Lima on Google Maps ↗

2. 2

   Jirón de la Unión

   

   This pedestrian street is the backbone of the Damero de Pizarro, the grid of the historic centre. Francisco Pizarro laid it out in 1535, the same year he founded Lima, and since the time of the Viceroyalty it has been the city's main axis. It runs from the Puente de Piedra to Paseo de la República Avenue, and across the Rímac River it continues as Jirón Trujillo.

   After the War of Independence the street stayed Lima's commercial heart and became the place where the aristocracy came to see and be seen. They even had a verb for it: jironear, to stroll the jirón. That reputation lasted until the late twentieth century, when migration from Peru's interior made the city grow enormously and the old elite moved elsewhere.

   The name has a clever logic. In 1862 Lima adopted Mariano Bolognesi's plan, first proposed by Manuel Atanasio Fuentes in 1857, to replace traditional street names with names drawn from the country's political geography. This street served as the dividing line, so every crossing street got one name on its west side and another on its east. The axis that joined them became the Union.

   Watch the first block near the river: the Church of Our Lady of the Forsaken stood there from its construction between 1669 and 1671 until it was demolished in 1937. The same block had the Arco del Puente, burned on 10 April 1879 by a Chilean baker, Cornelio Granados, five days after the War of the Pacific began. The second block was the old Calle de Palacio. The street is free and open at all hours. From here it is 680 m, about 9 minutes, to the cathedral, past the Hotel Maury.

   Hours

   24/7

   Price

   Free

   Location

   Jirón de la Unión on Google Maps ↗

3. 3

   Cathedral of Lima

   

   The cathedral fills the eastern side of the Plaza Mayor, with the Archbishop's Palace and the Iglesia del Sagrario right beside it. It is the seat of the Archdiocese of Lima, dedicated to Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist, and it counts as the oldest and largest church in Peru. What you see today took shape between 1602 and 1797.

   The ground beneath it was sacred long before the Spanish arrived. Here stood the Inca shrine of Puma Inti and the palace of Sinchi Puma, a prince from Cusco and a direct descendant of the Inca Sinchi Roca. When Pizarro assigned the plot to the church, he had Sinchi Puma renounce his property on paper, certified by a notary, so the takeover would not look like usurpation. It is worth pausing on that detail as you look at the façade.

   In 1535 Pizarro laid the first stone himself and carried the first timber in a public show of faith and humility. That first, small church was finished in 1538 and inaugurated on 11 March 1540. A papal bull of Pope Paul III on 14 May 1541 created the Diocese of Lima, and work on a proper cathedral began in 1542. Pizarro's daughter, Francisca Pizarro Yupanqui, contributed 5,000 gold pesos of the 15,000 it cost.

   Going inside costs admission and is worth it if you care about colonial Lima; allow an hour. Then walk 430 m, about 6 minutes, to San Francisco, passing the Palacio Arzobispal de Lima and the Catacumbas del Convento de San Francisco.

   Hours

   Mon–Fri 09:00–20:00, Sat 10:00–22:00, Sun 13:00–19:00

   Price

   S/ 30 foreigners (S/ 15 foreign children 6-12 years); S/ 20 Peruvians and residents (S/ 10 students and seniors); children under 6 free

   Website

   catedraldelima.org.pe ↗

   Location

   Cathedral of Lima on Google Maps ↗

4. 4

   San Francisco Monastery

   

   What looks like one church is really a whole religious complex, filling the blocks between Amazonas, Áncash and Lampa streets and Abancay Avenue. Read the three façades: the Baroque front of the Convent of San Francisco itself, and the Neoclassical fronts of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Solitude and the Chapel of the Miracle. Together they are part of the Historic Centre of Lima, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1991.

   The Spanish scholar Ramón Menéndez Pidal called it "the largest and noblest monument that the conquest erected in these prodigious lands". It remains one of the great legacies of the viceregal era and one of the cultural centres of Peru.

   Its beginnings were humble and a little chaotic. After the founding of Lima on 18 January 1535, the Franciscans received a plot next to Santo Domingo, where Friar Francisco de la Cruz built a simple shelter of branches to use as a chapel. When he left, there was no other Franciscan in the valley, so the lot sat empty. Pizarro handed it to the Dominicans and gave the Franciscans another plot, where the Chapel of the Miracle stands today. In 1546 Francisco de Santa Ana arrived, won the land back and built a modest church, which Viceroy Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza later helped enlarge together with the convent.

   This is one of the best-value visits on the walk. Give it an hour. From here it is only 410 m, about 6 minutes, to Plaza Bolívar and the old Inquisition building.

   Hours

   Mon–Sun 09:00–20:15

   Price

   15 PEN

   Website

   museoconventosanfranciscoycatacumbas.com.pe ↗

   Location

   San Francisco Monastery on Google Maps ↗

5. 5

   Museo de la Inquisición

   

   The museum, officially the Museo del Congreso y de la Inquisición, is currently closed for restoration until late 2027, so this is a stop for the outside view. You find it on Jirón Junín, facing Plaza Bolívar, and the building is protected as part of Peru's cultural heritage.

   This was the seat of the Tribunal of the Holy Office, the church court for religious offences, established in Lima on 29 January 1570 under Viceroy Francisco Álvarez de Toledo on the orders of the Crown of Castile. Behind these walls the building keeps original rooms: the Audience Hall with its Mudéjar coffered ceiling, where the so-called door of the secret had a small hole through which accusers testified without showing their faces, as well as the cells where prisoners waited for trial.

   The building's later life is just as telling. After independence it hosted Peru's first Constituent Congress, then served as the seat of the Senate until 1939, when the Senate moved to the Legislative Palace. A public library of the Chamber of Deputies followed in 1943, and on 26 July 1968 the museum was founded, devoted to both the Inquisition and the history of Congress. Before the restoration it welcomed 200,000 visitors a year.

   Take a few minutes on the square, then prepare for the longest stretch of the day: 8,230 m, about 112 minutes on foot, to Huaca Pucllana in Miraflores. If that is more walking than you want today, end the centre walk here and save the second half for another day.

   Local name

   Museo del Congreso y de la Inquisición

   Hours

   Temporarily closed for restoration until late 2027 (formerly Mon–Sun 09:00–17:00)

   Price

   S/.10

   Website

   congreso.gob.pe ↗

   Location

   Museo de la Inquisición on Google Maps ↗

6. 6

   Huaca Pucllana

   

   In the middle of Miraflores rises a pyramid 25 metres high, built almost entirely of adobe and fills of boulders and sand, with a group of patios, plazas and enclosures beside it. It was a ceremonial centre of the Lima culture, built between 200 and 700 AD. The upper part is thought to have been reserved for the elite, the lower part for everyone else.

   It nearly disappeared. For many years the site lay abandoned, used as a rubbish dump and even as a motocross track, and people called it Huaca Juliana. Around the 1940s it covered three times today's six hectares; smaller pyramids were destroyed for houses, avenues and parks. Since 1981 a team led by Isabel Flores Espinoza, backed by the Ministry of Culture and the Miraflores municipality, has excavated and restored it, and it is now the most researched archaeological site in Lima.

   The name comes from colonial documents: a local chief, the curaca Pedro Chumbi Charna, listed Pugliana as one of the boundaries of his lands. Another reading joins the Quechua huaca, sacred, with pucllana, place of play. The main deity was the sea, shown on ceramics found here as sharks, fish, sea lions and eels.

   A visit follows a set circuit and includes an exhibition room; budget an hour. Besides the day visits there are also night visits, a good option if you reach Miraflores late. Then walk 2,110 m, about 29 minutes, to San Isidro.

   Hours

   Wed–Mon 09:00–17:00 (day visits); Wed–Sun 18:45–21:00 (night visits, except the first Sunday of the month); Tue closed

   Price

   S/ 15.00 general daytime (S/ 7.50 reduced); S/ 17.00 general night-time (S/ 8.50 reduced)

   Website

   huacapucllanamiraflores.pe ↗

   Location

   Huaca Pucllana on Google Maps ↗

7. 7

   San Isidro

   

   You end in a very different Lima from the one you started in. San Isidro is an upscale district with about 600 metres of coastline and, today, the city's financial quarter: many banks and companies left downtown, the streets you walked this morning, for modern office blocks here.

   The district's oldest story is rooted in olive trees. In 1560 Antonio de Ribera, a field marshal of Gonzalo Pizarro, brought the first olive trees, which grew into the El Olivar Grove. The land had been granted to Nicolás de Ribera, a founder of Lima and its city council, and changed hands many times until 1777, when Isidro de Cortázar y Abarca, Count of San Isidro and the first ordinary mayor of Lima, bought the Limatambo hacienda. His title gave the district its name.

   The modern neighbourhood was planned from 1920, when a development company asked the sculptor and urban planner Manuel Piqueras Cotolí to design it. He deliberately chose an irregular, picturesque layout that still had a unified architectural character. On 24 April 1931 San Isidro, together with Orrantia and Country Club, was separated from Miraflores and became its own district.

   Through the 1980s and 1990s it grew into one of Lima's most dynamic districts. Walking here is free at any hour, and it makes a calm finish: from Pizarro's grid and the Inca shrine under the cathedral to an adobe pyramid and finally a colonial olive estate turned business district, you have crossed Lima's whole history on foot.

   Hours

   24/7

   Price

   Free

   Location

   San Isidro on Google Maps ↗

Shorter Ways to Walk Lima

The long stretch from the old centre to Miraflores splits this route neatly into two halves, so it is easy to walk only the part that suits your day.

Historic centre only

Stops: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

For a first day in Lima and anyone who wants colonial history without the long walk south. 2,990 m and 43 min of walking. Entry at the art museum, the cathedral and San Francisco; the Inquisition building is seen from outside.

Miraflores and San Isidro

Stops: 6, 7

For an afternoon or evening in the modern districts, or a second day after the centre. 2,110 m and 29 min of walking. Only Huaca Pucllana charges entry, by day or on a night visit.

Cathedral and monastery in a morning

Stops: 3, 4, 5

For travellers short on time who want the two great churches. 840 m and 12 min of walking, with entry at the cathedral and San Francisco.

How Long Does This Lima Tour Take on Foot?

The full route is 13.3 km with 3 h 3 min of pure walking, and almost two of those hours fall on the single stretch from Plaza Bolívar to Miraflores. Add an hour each for the art museum, the cathedral, San Francisco and Huaca Pucllana, plus short pauses on Jirón de la Unión, outside the Inquisition building and in San Isidro, and you get close to eight hours.

A day that works: start at the art museum at 10:00 and leave at 11:00, reach Jirón de la Unión at 11:22, the cathedral at 11:46 and San Francisco at 12:52. Leave the monastery at 13:52, pass the Inquisition building at 13:58, set off south at 14:08 and arrive at Huaca Pucllana at 16:00. From there you reach San Isidro at 17:29 and finish around 17:45.

The historic centre alone takes about three and a half hours with the three visits; Miraflores and San Isidro on their own fit into an hour and a half.

Before You Set Off in Lima

• Start and finish: The recommended start is the Museo de Arte de Lima in Exposition Park; the walk ends in San Isidro. You can join at any stop, and the GPS route takes you on from there.
• Best days: Choose your day with care: the art museum, Huaca Pucllana and the cathedral each have a day when they are closed or open late, which breaks the morning plan.
• Entry costs: Four visits charge admission: the art museum, the cathedral, San Francisco and a day visit to Huaca Pucllana. Jirón de la Unión and San Isidro cost nothing.
• The long stretch: Between Plaza Bolívar and Huaca Pucllana you walk 8,230 m in about 112 minutes. If that is too much for one day, walk the centre and the Miraflores half on separate days.

Common Questions about Walking Lima