Peru · Lima
Plan your Lima trip
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01Your itinerary
02Where to stay
Miraflores
Best for first-timers and anyone with a short stay or an early flightThe clifftop district where most visitors base themselves: safe, walkable, well lit, dense with restaurants and hotels at every price band, and directly on the Malecón promenade above the Pacific. The most touristed part of Lima, with the polish and the price premium that implies.
Miraflores Park, A Belmond Hotel
The seafront rooms on the Malecón are the only ones in the city that reliably deliver a Pacific view — worth the premium in summer, less so under the winter garúa.
€€€€Hotel Boulevard
Parque Kennedy is the district's centre of gravity — walkable to most Miraflores restaurants and the pickup point for almost every tour and transfer in the city.
€€Barranco
Best for repeat visitors, longer stays, and anyone who wants somewhere worth walking around after dinnerThe old seaside resort turned arts district south along the coast — republican-era mansions, murals, small museums, and Lima's best concentration of independent bars and coffee. Quieter than Miraflores by day, considerably louder near the Puente de los Suspiros on weekend nights.
Casa Republica Barranco Boutique Hotel
Barranco's converted republican houses are the most characterful rooms in Lima; ask for something off the bar strip if you value a quiet Saturday.
€€€Second Home Peru
The southern end of Barranco keeps the neighbourhood's character and loses the weekend noise, still within a fifteen-minute walk of everything.
€€San Isidro
Best for travellers who want calm, space and the highest hotel standardsLima's financial district and its greenest, quietest quarter, built around the sixteenth-century El Olivar olive grove. Handsome, very safe, home to the city's best business hotels and a serious restaurant scene — and noticeably less lively at night than the coastal districts.
Sonesta Hotel El Olivar
Waking up beside a four-hundred-year-old olive grove is the closest Lima gets to a genuinely peaceful morning, and it is ten minutes by car from Miraflores.
€€€€An apartment near Avenida Conquistadores
The Conquistadores strip has a dense run of very good restaurants and bakeries, which makes self-catering here far less of a compromise than it sounds.
€€€Centro Histórico
Best for history-focused short stays on a budget, with eyes openThe colonial capital itself — Plaza Mayor, the balconied streets, the churches and the catacombs on your doorstep. Busy and heavily policed by day, considerably emptier and less comfortable after dark, and the accommodation is a clear step behind the coastal districts.
A colonial-building hotel near Plaza San Martín
Staying here buys you the historic centre before the day crowds arrive; plan to take a booked car rather than walk once it gets dark.
€€Affiliate notePostcardRoute is reader-supported. Some links to Booking.com (stays, flights, car hire, tickets and tours, airport transfers) are affiliate links, tracked through CJ Affiliate: if you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend places we would send a friend.
03Tickets & tours
Huaca Pucllana
A stepped adobe pyramid built by the Lima culture around 500 AD, sitting incongruously in the middle of residential Miraflores, its millions of…
Tip Take the night tour if you can — the site is floodlit after dark and far more atmospheric, and the restaurant at its base looks straight onto the illuminated pyramid.
Larco Museum, Pueblo Libre
A private collection of pre-Columbian gold, silver and ceramics housed in an eighteenth-century mansion built over a seventh-century pyramid, with…
Tip The much-discussed gallery of erotic pre-Columbian pottery is in a separate building at the far end of the garden, and it is a serious archaeological collection rather…
Convento de San Francisco and the catacombs
A yellow Baroque monastery complex on the edge of the historic centre with a spectacular Moorish-style library of antique volumes, and beneath it,…
Tip The catacombs are guided-tour only and the passages are low and tight; go early, and skip it if you are seriously claustrophobic.
Plaza Mayor and the historic centre
The founding square of Spanish Lima, laid out by Pizarro in 1535 and ringed by the cathedral, the Archbishop's Palace and the Government Palace — the…
Tip The changing of the presidential guard at the Government Palace happens around midday; stand on the Jirón de la Unión side for a view that is not through railings.
The Malecón and Miraflores clifftop
Eight kilometres of clifftop parks a hundred metres above the Pacific, running from Miraflores toward Barranco, with paragliders launching off the…
Tip Walk it south toward Barranco in the late afternoon. On a clear evening this is the single best hour Lima offers, and tandem paraglide flights launch from beside Parque…
Barranco: Puente de los Suspiros and the bajada
The bohemian district's wooden Bridge of Sighs crosses a ravine that runs down to the sea, with the old fishermen's path beneath it, pastel…
Tip Do Barranco on foot on a weekday evening rather than a Saturday night, when the bar strip near the bridge gets loud and crowded enough to lose the atmosphere entirely.
Mercado de Surquillo No. 1
The working produce market across the Vía Expresa from Miraflores: whole fish on ice, tubs of ají amarillo and rocoto paste, fruit most visitors…
Tip Go before noon while the fish is fresh and the stalls are full, take cash in small notes, and eat at whichever counter has the longest local queue.
Barrio Chino and Calle Capón
South America's oldest Chinatown, founded by Cantonese labourers who arrived from the 1850s, and the source of chifa — the Chinese-Peruvian cooking…
Tip This sits inside the historic centre; visit at lunchtime and combine it with the Plaza Mayor and San Francisco rather than making a separate evening trip.
Day trips from Lima
Pachacamac
About 40km southeast of the city, a vast pre-Columbian pilgrimage complex of adobe temples and plazas that was already ancient when the Incas…
Day tripCaral
Roughly 200km north, in the Supe valley, the remains of the oldest known city in the Americas — monumental platform mounds and sunken circular plazas…
Day tripParacas and the Islas Ballestas
Three to four hours south by road, and better treated as an overnight than a day trip.
Day tripLunahuaná and the Cañete valley
A couple of hours south, a green river valley cut into the desert where Limeños go for whitewater rafting on the Río Cañete, small pisco bodegas that…
Day tripEverything to do in Lima
Skip-the-line tickets, guided tours and day trips, all in one place on Booking.com.
04Getting there & around
Getting around a city built for cars
Lima's traffic is not a mild inconvenience, it is a defining feature of daily life, and any plan you make should be built around it. The city sprawls across more than 40 districts, and a journey that looks like eight kilometres on the map can take fifty minutes at the wrong hour.
Flights
Compare fares into Lima and pick dates that suit the days you planned.
Airport transfers
Book a private or shared ride from the airport so the first evening starts at your door, not at a ticket queue.
Car hire from Lima
Only worth it for day trips beyond the city — in town, the plan above works on foot and public transport.
Affiliate notePostcardRoute is reader-supported. Some links to Booking.com (stays, flights, car hire, tickets and tours, airport transfers) are affiliate links, tracked through CJ Affiliate: if you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend places we would send a friend.