Lima

national capital, Peru

WRITTEN BY
David J. Robinson
Dellplain Professor of Latin American Geography, Syracuse
University, New York. Editor of Studying Latin America.
See Article History
Alternative Title: Ciudad de los Reyes
Lima, city, capital of Peru. It is the country’s commercial and
industrial centre. Central Lima is located at an elevation of 512 feet
(156 metres) on the south bank of the Rímac River, about 8 miles (13
km) inland from the Pacific Ocean port of Callao, and has an area of 27
square miles (70 square km). Its name is a corruption of
the Quechua name Rímac, meaning “Talker.” The city forms a modern
oasis, surrounded by the Peruvian coastal desert a short distance west
of the Andes Mountains. Area 1,506 square miles (3,900 square km).
Pop. (2007) metro. area, 8,472,935.

Unrestricted
 •

Cathedral, Plaza de Armas, Lima, Peru.Jeremy Woodhouse—Digital Vision/Getty Images

Lima, PeruEncyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

BRITANNICA QUIZ

Countries and Capitals Quiz

Unrestricted
 Basseterre

Physical And Human Geography

The character of the city
Perhaps the best clue to the significance of Lima to the country of Peru
can be found in its most popular nickname: El Pulpo (“The Octopus”).
Metropolitan Lima’s huge size—it accounts for about one-fourth of the
total population of Peru—has both resulted from and stimulated the
concentration of people, capital, political influence, and
social innovations. Lima’s unique status is but one of the more
important consequences of a highly centralized, unitary state that
from its inception in the early 19th century solved interregional
conflicts by focusing power and prestige on the city. With its port of
Callao and its location at the centre of Peru’s Pacific coast, Lima was
long the only point of contact between the country and the outside
world.

As with many sprawling and rapidly growing metropolitan centres,

Lima has its detractors as well as its promoters. Those who remember
the more tranquil, traditional days, before the arrival of millions of
migrants and before the many buses and automobiles brought
pollution and congestion, are prone to use another nickname for the
capital: Lima la Horrible. This is the noisy, dirty, gloomy, damp, and
depressing Lima, perceptions shared by both short-term visitors and
longtime residents. Even though sunshine does break through the
dense coastal fog in the summer, Lima then becomes unbearably hot
as well as humid, and the sunshine seems to emphasize even more
clearly the grimy buildings and lack of greenery in the central city.

Unrestricted
The landscape

The city site

Lima sprawls well beyond its original Spanish site at a bridgeable

point on the Rímac River. Disgorging precipitously from the high
Andes, the Rímac has formed a flat-topped alluvial cone, on which the
early Spanish colonists established their settlement. Since almost the
entire coastal plain in central Peru consists of unconsolidated
fluvioglacial deposits, cliff erosion and earthquakes are continual
threats. In expanding from its original site, the city has incorporated
within its fabric various hills and valleys that are also prone to earth
tremors and flash floods. One of the most notable characteristics of
Lima is the barren, unvegetated desert that surrounds it on all sides;
the grayish-yellow sands support almost no plant or animal life, save
where water has been artificially provided.

Climate

Unrestricted
Though Lima is located at a tropical latitude, the cool offshore Peru
(also called Humboldt) Current helps produce a year-round temperate
climate. Average temperature ranges 60–64 °F (16–18 °C) in the
winter months of May to November and 70–80 °F (21–27 °C) in the
summer months of December to April. The cooling of the coastal air
mass produces thick cloud cover throughout the winter, and
the garúa (dense sea mist) often rolls in to blanket areas of the city.
Precipitation, which rarely exceeds 2 inches (50 mm) per annum,
usually results from the condensation of the garúa. Lima is perhaps
best described as cold and damp in winter and hot and humid in
summer.

Because clouds tend to trap airborne pollutants, Limeños (residents of

Lima) can often taste the air. A permanent problem resulting from the
high humidity is oxidation, rust being a common sight. Many of the
wealthier citizens established winter homes on the coast north or
south of the city proper or in such localities as La Molina, a short
distance to the east of Lima, where the climate is free of fog and cloud.

The city layout

Lima contains a series of townscapes well defined by its long history.

The core of old Lima, delineated by Spanish colonists in the 16th
century and partly enclosed by defensive walls in the 17th, retains its
checkerboard street pattern. Bounded on the north by the Rímac and
on the east, south, and west by broad avenues, old Lima contains a few
restored colonial buildings (Torre Tagle Palace, the cathedral, and the
Archbishop’s Palace) interspersed among buildings of the 19th and
20th centuries, many of which were built upon the sites of former
colonial residences that had collapsed during the major earthquakes
that have struck the city. The old walls, however, were demolished in
the mid-19th century. The two principal squares (Plaza de Armas and
Plaza Bolívar) still provide the foci of architectural interest within
central Lima, and the enclosed wooden balconies so typical of the
colonial city have now become features to be preserved or restored.
The Presidential Palace (built on the site of Pizarro’s house) and many
other buildings reflect the past popularity of the French Empire style.

Unrestricted
 On the north side of the Rímac, the old colonial suburb of the same
name conserves relics of its past in its curved, narrow streets, tightly
packed with single-story houses, and its Alameda de los Descalzos
(“Boulevard of the Barefoot Monks”).

Unrestricted
•

Unrestricted
•

Plaza de Armas, Lima.© RM/Shutterstock.com

Presidential Palace, Lima.© Jennifer Stone/Shutterstock.com

Cathedral of Lima.© Carlos E. Santa Maria/Shutterstock.com

Lima: cathedral altarMain altar of the cathedral of Lima.© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

The former residential zone of central Lima has undergone several

radical modifications, especially since the 1930s. Most of the old
spacious mansions have been subdivided so that they now
accommodate as many as 50 families. These inner-city slums
(variously called tugurios, corralones, and callejones) have been
occupied by immigrants from the countryside striving to gain a
foothold in the urban economy and society. Sanitary conditions in
such zones are often very poor.

Unrestricted
 Lima: homesColourful homes on a hillside in Lima,
Peru.Photos.com/Jupiterimages

Other parts of old Lima have experienced demolition and

reconstruction. Housing has given way to banks, insurance offices, law
firms, and government offices. There have been repeated attempts to
stimulate pride in El Cercado (the formerly walled enclosure),
although some Limeños regard it as a place to pass through rather
than to preserve and enhance. One finds little evidence
of gentrification in Lima; unlike other Latin American capitals and
even other cities within Peru, central Lima contains relatively few
outstanding architectural features.

Lima did not expand much beyond the walls of the old city until
railways and tramlines were constructed in the mid-19th century. For
the next 75 years growth was steady, the axes of urban development
from old Lima assuming distinctive characters: the area west to Callao
became the industrial corridor; the sweeping bay frontage to the south

Unrestricted
from Barranco to Magdalena was transformed into the choice
residential zone; and eastward, toward Vitarte, a mix of industrial and
lower-class suburbs emerged. As the pace of urban expansion
increased in the 1930s, small communities formed in the open country
between Lima and the coast. These gradually coalesced into such
urban districts as La Victoria, Lince, San Isidro, and Breña. The
numerous farms and small tracts of cultivated land between suburbs
and barren, dry land also became urbanized as immigrants from the
interior occupied these areas. In the 1950s Lima became noted for
these barriadas (squatter camps of shanties), which as they became
more permanently established were renamed pueblos jóvenes (“young
towns”). These communities have come to contain one-third of the
population of metropolitan Lima. The older pueblos jóvenes, such as
Comas, are now difficult to distinguish from the “established” sections
of the city, since the early constructions of cardboard, tin cans, and
wicker matting have long since given way to bricks, cement blocks,
and neat gardens.

Lima’s contemporary townscapes provide such contrasts that it is easy

to forget that the rich and the poor belong to the same society. Within
a few blocks one can move from luxury to abject poverty. With
downtown Lima often heavily congested with traffic, suburban
locations were chosen for many new businesses, factories, and
shopping centres. In some areas, classic corner stores run by Chinese
and Japanese immigrants and their descendants are fighting a losing
battle against the competition of large, hygienic supermarkets.
Elsewhere, however, open-air markets and crowds
of ambulantes (street vendors) are the rule.

Unrestricted
 Miraflores, one of the wealthiest residential districts in metropolitan
Lima.© Maria Veras/Shutterstock.com

The people
Just as the physical fabric of Lima has been transformed since the
1930s, so too has its population. It is now difficult to identify what
might be called a true Limeño, for in a very real sense Lima has
become the most Peruvian of cities; everywhere one can hear different
accents, reflecting the myriad origins of the provincianos who have
made the city a microcosm of the country. Before the arrival of the
highland migrants (commonly called serranos or, if demonstrating
what are perceived to be Indian characteristics, cholos), it was
relatively easy to mark the difference between the European elite and
other ethnic mixtures. Ethnicity and class in modern-day Lima,
however, present a complexity that defies easy classification. The
greatest difference that persists, and perhaps even increases, is that
which divides the rich and influential from the poor and powerless.

Unrestricted
One has only to compare the elegance of those who stroll through
Kennedy Park in Miraflores on a Saturday night with the squalor of
those who beg in central Lima to realize that, in growing, the city has
not developed. For the great majority of people, access to piped water,
sewage systems, inexpensive food, and steady employment are still
dreams for the future.

The vast majority of Limeños are Roman Catholics, which gives the
city a traditional, conservative atmosphere; this is evidenced by the
enormous crowds of people who gather for such annual religious
processions as El Señor de los Milagros (“the Lord of Miracles”), Santa
Rosa de Lima, and San Martín de Porres. Many residents from the
slums and poor suburbs, however, have questioned the church’s
positions on social and political issues.

Unrestricted
Lima: cathedralCathedral of Lima.© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing
Partner)

The economy
Whatever indicator is used to measure economic performance, Lima
maintains a dominant position within Peru, accounting for the great
majority of the country’s industrial output and nearly all of the volume
of its financial transactions. The size of Lima’s population makes it the
premier market for all domestic and imported goods; Limeños make
some four-fifths of the country’s consumer purchases each year.

Industry and commerce

Industry in Lima is located primarily in the old Callao–Lima–Vitarte

corridor, with more recent additions in zones fringing the Pan-
American Highway north and south of the city. Industrial activity
is diverse, ranging from shipbuilding and oil refining to food
processing and the manufacture of cement, chemicals,
pharmaceuticals, plastics, textiles and clothing, and furniture. Much of
this capital-intensive, heavily unionized industrial base, however,
operates well below capacity, in most part because of the dire
economic situation of Peru.

There has thus been a gradual de-emphasis of the more established

industries, and since about 1970 a new type of informal, artisan-based
industrial structure has developed. These small-scale, labour-intensive
enterprises, which often are family controlled, have been better able to
meet the demands of consumers by having goods more readily
available (in part by avoiding bureaucratic red tape) and by offering
goods for lower prices.

Many industries have located within metropolitan Lima because of its

pool of skilled labour, personal access to government officials, and the
benefits of well-established networks of marketing and services such
as banking. Manufacturing has not provided an adequate solution to

Unrestricted
the demands of the vast numbers who seek employment. One result
has been the rapid rise in service jobs, the majority of which are
informal in character. This type of employment has been estimated to
account for at least two-fifths of total economic activity in
the metropolitan area. The thousands of street vendors have become a
visual reminder of the lack of steady employment in the formal sector.
One of the largest employers in Lima—directly and indirectly—is the
national government. Its ministries, institutes, and other agencies
provide jobs not only for an extensive bureaucracy but also for the
hundreds of thousands of people who in various ways serve the needs
of those fully employed.

SIMILAR TOPICS

• Cuzco
• Arequipa
• Iquitos
• Trujillo
• Callao
• Miraflores
• Puno
• Cajamarca
• Huaraz
• Chiclayo

Transportation

The railway line from Callao to Lima is the oldest in South America,
while the line that climbs east past Vitarte and into the Andes reaches
the highest point of any standard-gauge railway in the world. The
growth of automobile transportation has given rise to the heavily
congested traffic conditions that exist in contemporary Lima.
Although there is now a well-developed highway system in
the metropolitan area, including an expressway between central Lima
and Miraflores, the vast majority of Limeños must cope with an
outdated street network and rely on three basic modes of transport:
minibuses (vans) that can hold up to a dozen passengers; small buses

Unrestricted
that can carry about two dozen people; and larger municipal buses,
many of which operate in bad repair.

Andes Mountains: transportationMother and child boarding a train

from Lima to Huancayo in the Andes Mountains, Peru.Geoff
Tompkinson/GTImage.com (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

Unrestricted
 BRITANNICA QUIZ

Countries and Capitals Quiz

Antananarivo

Because transport in Lima is at best highly inefficient and at worst

chaotic, hundreds of amateur taxi drivers, unlicensed and often
ignorant of all but the most obvious locations within the city, offer
their services to the harried or unwary pedestrian at peak traffic hours.
Heavy trucks, private cars, and motorcycles and bicycles of all shapes
and sizes complete the traffic mix. Several plans for a subway or
elevated rail system have been proposed for Lima, in part to overcome
the obvious problems of the heavily congested and polluted centre but
also to interconnect the peripheral suburbs more effectively and thus
divert much traffic from the central city. The construction of an
elevated rail system was suspended in the early 1990s.

Administration and social conditions

Government

The problems of controlling Lima’s growth have proved difficult, but

those of municipal administration have become almost insoluble.
Metropolitan Lima consists of the department of Lima and the
province of Callao, which are further divided into dozens of political
districts. Each province and each district is
administratively autonomous, so that citywide planning and
development can be undertaken only by means of negotiated

Unrestricted
decisions. The capital district of Lima, with its long-established
expertise in urban administration, has repeatedly called for the
creation of a metropolitan authority that could more efficiently
confront the many issues facing the region. Local district autonomy,
however, which was won only after great political effort, has become a
major obstacle to any unified approach, although a municipal law
enacted in 1984 created a Metropolitan Council for Greater Lima (an
assembly of district mayors) as well as agencies for improving
cooperation between district councils and sharing technical assistance.

The system of generating and spending revenues in metropolitan Lima

provides an example of the problems of interdistrict coordination.
Since 1983 each district has been able both to generate its own
revenues and to utilize them as it sees fit. Thus, there has been a
growing disparity in the quality of services between the wealthy
districts, which can generate adequate revenues for their needs, and
the poor districts, which not only generate inadequate revenues but
also are in most need of such services as water, sewers, electricity, and
paved streets.

The differences in income and expenditures between rich and poor

districts are, to some extent, paralleled by distinctive party affiliations
and voting behaviour. The poorer districts have generally supported
candidates from left-wing parties, while the more affluent suburbs
have supported centre-right candidates. This interparty rivalry has
hampered efforts at improving cooperation between districts as well as
between the municipal and national government.

Services

The rapidity and scale of Lima’s growth have placed great strains upon
the provision of public services. Potable water, which in the past was
obtained from the Rímac and from shallow local wells, now must be
brought in via lakes and diverted rivers from the high Andes. Equally
difficult has been the provision of electricity. Only with the completion
in the early 1970s of the expensive hydroelectric project on the
Mantaro River has affordable power been available for Lima’s industry

Unrestricted
and residential population. These sources of water and power,
however, have been at the expense of the impoverished Andean
departments that have provided them.

Within the capital itself the problems of providing services have been
legion. Most municipalities have had barely enough income to finance
their routine operations, with nothing left over to finance new
projects. In addition, municipalities that have been able
to allocate money for improved services often have been unable to
adequately plan and execute what usually have been complex and
highly technical projects. Finally, even when these projects have been
built it has seldom been possible, given the penurious state of the
majority of the population, to require payment for the actual cost of
the services.

Caught between the need for inner-city renewal and suburban

expansion, most municipalities have turned to the national
government and such international agencies as the World Bank for
assistance. Their argument has been that Lima’s problems have
become national problems and, as such, require national solutions.

Cultural life
In spite of the many and complex problems that confront those who
live in Lima, it is still the dominant and most vibrant cultural centre
of Peru. Lima contains the most distinguished universities in the
country—including the oldest university in South America,
the National University of San Marcos (1551), and the Pontifical
Catholic University of Peru (1917)—as well as numerous other schools.
Nearly all of the major academies, learned societies, and research
institutes are located in metropolitan Lima, as are the national cultural
institutions.

The numerous museums in the metropolitan area display the richness

of Peru’s pre-Columbian and colonial past. Within Lima itself are the
well-restored burial sites (huacas) of the pre-Inca coastal cultures, and
south of the city stand the remains of Pachacamac, one of Peru’s

Unrestricted
largest pre-Hispanic religious centres. Dozens of other prehistoric
sites await funds for excavation and investigation, but almost all are
threatened by urban construction.

Lima has several daily newspapers—El Comercio (“Commerce”),

founded in 1839, is the country’s oldest—and numerous weekly
periodicals, among which the magazine Caretas has become
established as the newsweekly of Peru. There are several television and
radio stations, and Internet cafés have sprung up throughout the city.
Bookstores and book readers, however, are in the minority: the
electronic media and a continual shortage of paper have combined to
limit the circulation of the printed word. For many lower-class
Limeños, the most popular reading materials are the comic books and
dime novels that can be rented from street-corner stalls.

Recreation in Lima takes many forms, but perhaps no sports are more
important than football (soccer) for men and volleyball for women.
Local football clubs have large and devoted followings. Other popular
sports include horse racing, cockfighting, bullfighting, swimming, and
tennis. Golf and polo are enjoyed by some of the more affluent
residents. Dozens of cinemas, theatre clubs, and discotheques provide
nightlife, and there are scores of peñas, nightclubs featuring folk
music. The music of Lima, as symbolized in the works of Chabuca
Granda and Alicia Maguiña Málaga, is always popular, and it has
enjoyed a renewed interest on the part of the public at large.

A delicious variety of food can be found in the fashionable

international-quality restaurants of central Lima and the bay area and
in the hundreds of lesser cafés, chifas (Chinese
restaurants), picanterías (serving traditional dishes),
and cevicherías (seafood restaurants specializing in seviche,
or cebiche, a typical coastal dish of marinated fish). Fortunately for
Lima, the migrants from other areas of Peru carried with them their
highly flavoured regional dishes, making the city a gastronome’s
delight. Added to these foods are excellent local beers, grape brandy
(pisco), wines, and other drinks.

Unrestricted
One of the consequences of the massive migration to Lima has been
the reinforcement of cultural ties between the capital’s new
urban communities and their localities of origin. Provincial and
district clubs and associations celebrate weekly with songs, dances,
and foods typical of the distinctive regions. Much of Peru’s folklore can
be learned in the heart of Lima itself.

History

Pre-Columbian and colonial periods

The area around Lima has been inhabited for thousands of years.
Urban communities of significant size date from the pre-Inca Early
Intermediate Period (c. 200 BCE–600 CE), the most important
being Pachacamac, which was an important religious site in both pre-
Inca and Inca times. Much of the ransom demanded by
the conquistador Francisco Pizarro for the Inca chief Atahuallpa
(Atahualpa) was obtained from Pachacamac.

The Spanish city of Lima was founded by Pizarro on Jan. 18, 1535, as
the Ciudad de los Reyes (“City of the Kings”). Although the name
never stuck, Lima soon became the capital of the new Viceroyalty of
Peru, chosen over the old Inca capital of Cuzco to the southeast
because the coastal location facilitated communication with Spain.

Lima developed into the centre of wealth and power for the entire
viceroyalty: as the seat of the audiencia (high court), it administered
royal justice; and, being the headquarters in the viceroyalty of
the Inquisition, it pronounced on religious and moral matters. It also
became the site of Peru’s most prestigious associations and centres of
learning, including the University of San Marcos (1551), the Peruvian
Academy of Letters (1887), the National University of Engineering
(1896), and the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (1917). José
Hipólito Unnúe founded a medical school there in 1808.

Unrestricted
From the late 17th to the mid-19th century, however, Lima grew
extremely slowly in both area and population. The city was devastated
by a powerful earthquake in 1746. Although it was rebuilt in grandiose
fashion, influenced heavily by the European Enlightenment, it
remained politically conservative and socially stratified. Lima
maintained its loyalty during the struggles for Latin American
independence in the early 19th century, with Peru becoming the last
mainland colony to declare its independence from Spain (July 1821).

David J. Robinson

The modern city

Lima’s development into a modern city began after the completion of
the Lima-Callao railroad in 1851. Interurban railway links
to Miraflores, Ancón, and Chosica followed in the next 20 years and
provided the opportunity for suburban growth. The small, compact,
pedestrian city gradually lost its wealthier residents, who physically
distanced themselves from the lower classes by building mansions in
and around Miraflores. Also during that period, Lima and Callao
benefited from a boom in exports of nitrate-rich guano deposits, which
were collected from islands off the Peruvian coast and shipped to
Europe. However, Lima’s prosperity subsequently declined as political
turmoil swept the country, and, as a result of the disastrous War of the
Pacific, the Chilean military looted and occupied the city (1881–83),
burning the National Library in the process.

Despite the loss of the library, the city’s literary scene experienced a
rebirth with Ricardo Palma’s series of colonial legends and stories
called Tradiciones Peruanas (“Peruvian Traditions”), which appeared
between 1872 and 1910. Influential literary figures of the early 20th
century included the leftist political leader and essayist José Carlos
Mariátegui and the poets César Vallejo, José María Eguren, and José
Santos Chocano; although many of their works focused on events
outside of Lima (e.g., the plight of rural Indians), they exerted a
profound influence on the intelligentsia of the city and, by extension,
the country.

Unrestricted
A new wave of urban expansion in the 1920s and ’30s was set off by
the automobile and the subsequent road-building program that
improved transportation not only within the capital but also between
Lima and other parts of the country. For the first time, migrants could
reach Lima relatively easily, and this rich, powerful, and modernizing
centre became a national magnet. The consequences for Lima were
drastic. From 1940 to 1980 some 2,000,000 people moved to the city.
Hundreds of thousands of shanties were constructed on the bare,
unoccupied slopes that rose above the red-tiled roofs of the inner
suburbs and on the flat desert benches that encircled Lima. Individual
acts of occupying unused and unclaimed pieces of land gave way to
well-planned “invasions” involving many hundreds of new city
residents. So enormous became the numbers of the self-help housing
units that the government finally yielded to the residents’ initiatives,
awarding titles to the land and trying to provide basic services.
Roughly one-third of metropolitan residents lived in pueblos
jóvenes by 1990. A system of multilane expressways was built in the
late 20th century to serve the city’s expanding population, which had
surpassed 7,000,000 by the early 21st century.

David J. RobinsonThe Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Lima continues to influence nearly every facet of Peruvian national

life—economic, political, and cultural. Since the mid-20th century,
some of the more renowned works of novelist Mario Vargas Llosa have
been set in Lima, including La ciudad y los perros (1963; “The City
and the Dogs”; Eng. trans. The Time of the Hero) and La tía Julia y el
escribidor (1977; “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter”). Among the more
recent works focusing on Lima are Julio Ramón Ribeyro’s tragicomic
stories and Jaime Bayly’s Yo amo a mi mami (1999; “I Love My
Mom”), relating the experiences of a suburban child raised by
household servants.

The city’s historic centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage

site in 1988; in 1991 the site was redefined to include the former
convent of San Francisco. However, Lima’s historic buildings are
threatened by elevated levels of air pollution from automobiles and
buses and by earthquakes (the largest to ravage Lima occurred in

Unrestricted
1746, killing 5,000 people) and other hazards (such as a fire that
destroyed the ornate municipal theatre in 1998). In the 1990s many of
Lima’s antique wooden balconies were repaired and restored.

Unrestricted