Rimaq

The Rímac valley runs from the Andes to the Pacific, crossing the dry coastal plain of central Peru. Irrigation sustained Indigenous communities here long before the Spanish arrived. On land associated with the lordship of Rímac, Francisco Pizarro founded Lima in January 1535. Its position near the harbor of Callao made it the principal gateway between the Andean interior and the sea.

Lima became the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and a center of government, commerce and religious life. Churches, monasteries and mansions rose around the main square, while a stone bridge connected the city across the Rímac. The University of San Marcos, founded in 1551, joined the city’s schools and hospitals, and religious orders established great convents such as San Francisco. Their buildings drew on the work of local and European craftspeople. Its wealth attracted threats from the ocean, and walls were built to protect it in the seventeenth century.

Powerful earthquakes in 1586, 1687 and 1746 repeatedly damaged the city, prompting rebuilding and changes to its architecture. Builders used adobe and brick for lower walls and lighter quincha, a framework filled with cane and plaster, for upper storeys. The creation of new viceroyalties in the eighteenth century reduced Lima’s former dominance over Spanish South America. The earthquake of 1746 also sent a destructive tsunami into Callao. Lima nevertheless remained the political heart of Spanish Peru until independence was proclaimed there in 1821. Its streets and buildings preserve the layered history of a capital built upon an older Andean landscape.