Arequipa’s Top 10
The Arequipa Cathedral Basilica spire and Chachani Volcano at sunset. Location is number 6 on the list below!
Arequipa is one of the top destinations in Peru – and for good reason!
If I had to live somewhere in Peru besides Cusco, it would be in Arequipa. I love this city and its restaurants. Arequipa is a beautiful city, ringed by spectacular (and dormant) volcanoes, with a thriving culinary scene and lots of fun things to do and places to see. My favorite restaurants in Arequipa are on this page.
Here are my top ten favorite places in Arequipa!
1. Monasterio de Santa Catalina
The first place you should visit in Arequipa is Santa Catalina. It’s absolutely stunning for photography but it’s also a very important piece of Peruvian history and the global feminism movement. Before my first Peru trip in 2013 I read Daughters of the Conquistadors: Women of the Viceroyalty of Peru by Luis Martín. I learned that nunneries throughout Peru, including Santa Catalina in Arequipa, were safe havens for women who had been sent, basically as mail-order brides, to marry the Spanish men who came to plunder South America. Many were quickly widowed and chose to enter convents rather than marry another Spanish man who spent his days fighting and pillaging.
When you visit Santa Catalina, you’ll see where the women lived, apartments that functioned like condos, which are more significant than they first appear. Inside the convents, women could buy and sell property, like their condos. Outside, they were property. Inside, women could vote for their abbess, who was like a mayor of their city. Outside, women in Peru couldn’t vote until 1955. So many women joined convents during the 1600s and 1700s that the viceroyalty several times forbid Spanish-born women from entering convents and even asked the Pope to stop women from joining these refuges where they enjoyed far more rights than outside.
You can see both Chachani (left) and Misti (right) from the rooftops of Santa Catalina.
There are usually guides at the entrance and I highly recommend hiring one, especially if you are interested in the history of the convent. Even if you’re not into history, definitely visit Santa Catalina and get a cup of coffee and a pastry at their garden café. There are still some resident nuns who bake amazing things for visitors and make artisanal soap and other great souvenirs.
Entrance tickets are s/45 soles and it’s open every day from 9am-6pm but the last entrance is at 5pm. There are discounts for Peruvians and students. Check the Santa Catalina website for more information.
2. Cathedral Basilica
Arequipa’s cathedral is fascinating for its architecture and international interior. Construction was started in 1540, but it has gone through a lot of changes since then. Earthquakes have damaged it in 1666, 1668, 1687, 1784 and 1868, though none were as bad as the 2001 quake that tumbled one of the bell towers. This cathedral-basilica has the distinction of being the only cathedral in Peru, and one of about a hundred in the world, allowed to fly the Vatican flag. Curiously, the interior has many unique gifts from other countries. The wooden pulpit is from France and perches on a sculpture of the devil. The organ was made in Belgium and there is also a Byzantine-style brass lamp, made in Spain. One of the towers had an English clock from 1842 and many of the altars and columns are Italian marble.
If you love religious history, this will be one of your favorite places in Arequipa. Even if you don’t usually visit churches or cathedrals, it’s worth taking the tour to get up on the roof for the view across the city and of the surrounding volcanoes. The entrance ticket is s/10 soles and it’s open Monday-Saturday 7-10am and from 5-7pm. Go for the 5pm tour to get the beginning of the sunset at the end of the tour from the roof, then go across the plaza to Hotel Katari to see the rest of the sunset from their rooftop. Tip the guide s/5 or more. The museum is open Monday-Saturday 10am-4:15pm. Check the museum website for more information.
3. Ruta del Sillar
When you want to venture outside the city, your first tour should be the Ruta del Sillar, which explores the quarry where the Arequipa’s signature white pumice stone is found. Walk around the historic center of the city for only a few minutes and you’ll notice that most historic buildings are made with giant blocks of sparkling white stone. It was once volcanic ash from the surrounding volcanoes, petrified and compacted over millennia into the perfect building blocks for a beautiful city.
The tour starts near the Plaza de Armas and then heads west of the city to the quarry and a nearby canyon with ancient petroglyphs. The quarry is now used more for tourism and producing sculptures rather than building blocks. One quarry wall is now a replica of the entrance to Arequipa’s cathedral and there are dozens of sculptures made for photo ops. You can buy queso helado, a local kind of ice cream, and wander through the sculptures. Prepare for sun and dust, as any little bit of wind will whip up the dust and Arequipa is almost always sunny.
All tour agencies in Arequipa sell this tour and you can read my Ruta del Sillar blog here.
4. Museo de Santuarios Andinos
In 1955 archeologist Johan Reinhard, working with the National Geographic Society, was near the summit of the Ampato volcano, north of Arequipa, when he saw a cloth bundle. It was the frozen mummy of a 13 or 14 year old girl from Cusco, sacrificed in the 1440s. She is known as the Lady of Ampato, but affectionately called Juanita locally. The last time I went to see her, my friends in Arequipa lightly said “say hi to Juanita for us!”
The museum “Museo de Santuarios Andinos” was built for her and though it has a few other small collections, the most interesting part of the museum is Juanita and everything that was sacrificed with her. Representative of the Andean concept of duality, Juanita was found with a miniature gold statue of herself, dressed in exactly the same outfit the real girl wore. There were lots of fascinating things found with her, which are all in the museum.
When I visited Juanita, the glare on her freezer case made her hard to photograph, so this is my best photo of her.
She was perfectly preserved because she was frozen, not mummified like the Incas or Egyptians. Unfortunately, part of her face melted before Reinhard’s team was able to protect her, so she has a bit of an ugly grimace. If they had found her even a few weeks earlier, it’s possible we would see a peaceful smile on her frozen face. The rest of her body is perfectly preserved, so scientists were able to take samples from her stomach to see what she’d been eating and do CT scans of her body. She is currently kept at -19º Celsius / -2.2º Fahrenheit in a steel and Plexiglas display that is not always in the public part of the museum, as studies are ongoing.
Entrance tickets are s/25 soles, and the museum is open Monday-Saturday 9am-6pm and Sunday 9am-2pm. Tours are included in the entrance cost but tip your guide. Check the Santuarios Andinos website for more information.
5. Mansion del Fundador
Garcí Manuel de Carbajal founded the modern city of Arequipa on August 15, 1540 and his home is now a museum. It’s full of 16th and 17th century furniture and other artifacts, but it’s really the gardens that draw visitors. It’s a beautiful, green place full of flowers, which makes it the perfect spot to get away from Arequipa’s dusty desert.
This is a bit of a taxi ride south of the center of Arequipa, but definitely worth the trip. Check the Mansion del Fundador website for more information. Tickets are s/17 soles and it’s open 9am-5pm every day.
This is absolutely the best spot in Arequipa to watch, and photograph, the sunset.
6. Hotel Katari
This is my favorite spot in Arequipa to watch the sunset. The hotel is beautiful, but even if you stay somewhere else, you should get a drink or meal at their rooftop. Make a reservation or get there about an hour before sunset because the tables fill up quickly. There is a minimum spend on the rooftop, so don’t go just for a bottle of water.
Check the Hotel Katari website for more information.
7. Plaza de Yanahuara & Restaurants
The Plaza de Yanahuara is great for three things: the panoramic view of Arequipa and the Misti Volcano, queso helado and picanterías. The view is amazing and the arches that frame it are inscribed with quotes from famous Peruvian authors, like Arequipa’s own Mario Vargas Llosa. If you haven’t tried queso helado already, this is the perfect spot. Queso helado is a kind of ice cream synonymous with Arequipa and dusted with cinnamon. Queso means cheese, but it doesn’t taste at all like cheese. Arequipa is also famous for its picanterías, restaurants that serve big portions for lunch where guests are expected to stay for hours, snacking between courses or lingering over extra rounds of drinks after the meal. Eating at a picantería is an event as much as it is a meal. In general, Arequipa has some of the best restaurants in Peru, even when compared to Lima.
Arequipa’s streets of sillar gave the city its nickname of “The White City.”
8. El Molino de Sabandía
This old mill, built in 1621, is now a museum and park, perfect for taking a picnic lunch. This is a fun spot to see how flour was ground for centuries, as the old mill stones are still in place and the channeled water still turns the paddles that make the mill work. There are also artifacts like old plows and other farm implements used in Arequipa.
Entrance is s/10 for adults with discounts for students and seniors. Open every day 9am-5pm.
9. Salt Lake
If you want to see the Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia but don’t have time to add Bolivia to your Peru trip, this will be your Arequipa highlight. During the dry season, from about May to December, this lake is a sparkling white salt flat and during the rainy season January through April it’s a shallow lake. Both seasons are excellent for photography but there is a risk of the road being impassible in the rainy season. The salt lake is called Laguna de Salinas in Spanish and it’s a great day trip but be aware that it’s a three hour drive each way. All tour agencies in Arequipa offer this day tour.
A condor soars over Colca Canyon.
10. Colca Canyon
This is absolutely my favorite place near Arequipa, but I don’t recommend this as a day trip. The canyon is one of the deepest in Peru and you are almost guaranteed to see condors gliding past you at the canyon rim overlooks. There are multi-day treks into the canyon, beautiful lodges, hot springs and tons of things to do and see. If you are there the 14th of July or 8th of December, you can go see the Wititi dance performed. This is a unique dance specific to Colca Canyon in which both men and women wear long dresses and whirl around. Check out this video of wititi and read my Colca Canyon blog here.
I love Colca Canyon so much I got it on Fodor’s Go List for 2025. You really should visit Colca when you’re in Peru!
I truly love Arequipa and hope that you can visit! Contact me to schedule a travel call for help planning your Peru trip!
