Things to do
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Catedral de Arequipa
The cathedral fills the whole north side of the Plaza de Armas, rebuilt in white sillar volcanic stone after the fire of 1844 and the earthquake of 1868. A museum ticket includes the roof terrace, which is the only public way onto the front above the arcade.
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Casa Andina Premium
A restored eighteenth century casona on the Plaza de Armas, with rooms set around a sillar courtyard and a restaurant under the square's arcade. It is the most central of the city's larger hotels, and the upper floors look straight across to the cathedral.
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Casa Museo Mario Vargas Llosa
The house where the novelist was born in 1936, run by the region as a museum that walks visitors through his life and books room by room. The telling is theatrical rather than archival, using projections and staged sets, and takes about an hour.
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Iglesia de la Compañía
A Jesuit church finished in 1698 whose carved sillar doorway is the high point of Andean baroque in the city. The San Ignacio chapel behind it keeps a painted ceiling of tropical flowers, birds and warriors that survived because the room was used for storage.
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Mercado San Camilo
The city's covered market of 1881, on an iron frame long attributed to the Eiffel workshop, filling a block with fruit, cheese, herbs and rows of juice stalls. The upper aisles hold the picanterías where Arequipeño dishes such as rocoto relleno are cooked to order.
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Mirador de Yanahuara
A row of sillar arches on the edge of Yanahuara, each carved with a line from an Arequipeño writer, framing Misti, Chachani and Pichu Pichu across the rooftops. It is a short walk over the Grau bridge from the centre and is busiest at sunset.
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Misti
The volcano that stands over Arequipa at 5,822 metres, close enough that its cone appears at the end of city streets. The climb is a non technical two day walk from the Aguada Blanca side with a night camped near 4,700 metres, and it asks for acclimatisation rather than skill.
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Molino de Sabandía
A stone flour mill of 1621 in the irrigated countryside south of the city, restored in the Sixties and still turned by its own water wheel. The grounds hold alpacas and old terracing, and the drive out passes the farmland that supplies Arequipa's markets.
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Monasterio de Santa Catalina
A walled convent of 1579 that ran as a small town of its own for three centuries, with named streets, painted cloisters and cells in ochre and cobalt. It covers some twenty thousand square metres, and the quietest hour is the first one after opening.
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Mundo Alpaca
A working sorting yard and textile centre by the Chili river, where alpacas and llamas graze in a garden and fleece is graded, spun and woven in front of visitors. A small museum sets out the difference between alpaca, llama and vicuña wool, and the looms are worked by hand.
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Museo Santuarios Andinos
The museum built around Juanita, an Inca girl sacrificed on the summit of Ampato around 1450 and found frozen in 1995 after ash from Sabancaya melted the ice cap. Entry is by guided tour only, and the body itself is shown for part of the year.
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Plaza de Armas
The square is arcaded on three sides in sillar and closed on the fourth by the cathedral, with the volcanoes standing over the roofline. Cafes on the upper floors of the portales give the best view of them, and the light on the stone is strongest late in the day.